Alright, What's All This Fuss About Content Marketing?!

Alright, What's All This Fuss About Content Marketing?!

Content marketing strategies can help you to connect with your audience in ways that are effective enough to boost your conversions. How? Well, your potential customers are craving valuable and informative content from you right now. And we know this because more consumers than ever before feel comfortable engaging with the online space, particularly in relation to making important purchasing decisions.

Importantly, your content should reach your target audience in ways that feel authentic and organic. Disruptive marketing arguably has its place but content marketing can help you to attract, engage and delight all facets of your target markets. This will allow you to positive improve your brand awareness, establish your business as a leading figure within your niche, and boost those all-important conversions.

What Exactly is Content Marketing?

In short, content marketing is a term that refers to the process of devising, creating, publishing and sharing content intended to reach a specific audience. It can have a variety of benefits, including:

- Educating prospects and leads about the services and/or products you can provide

- Building important relationships with consumers that will drive loyalty

- Showing an audience how your services and/or products can solve issues they're facing

- Establishing a feeling of community with your brand at its heart

We have reached a point where content marketing strategies can more positively resonate with consumers than something like outbound marketing, which works by interrupting audiences.

Are There Different Types of Content Marketing?

One of the best parts about content marketing is that there are many different types, some of which will suit your brand and your audience better than others.

- Social Media

More than 3.5 billion people globally use social media platforms, so it's easy to see why businesses are investing more than ever before in their social strategies. The platforms you choose to use will depend on where your audience spend most of their time online, each of which will provide you with multiple ways to create and share.

- Blogs

With blog content, you are free to get as creative as you want as long as you are also focusing on delivering value to your audience. Additionally, you can link to other valuable pieces of content within the main body copy, share product information, and integrate social buttons to encourage your audience to share.

- Video

Stats show that almost 70% of consumers prefer to learn about a product and/or service through the medium of video. There are a variety of ways you can choose to share video content, including building a YouTube channel with a loyal following, sharing on social media, and embedding it into your website.

- Podcasts

Podcasts are a particularly popular medium for the under-32s, so if you want to engage a younger audience, creating your own could be an excellent option. Research in 2020 found that almost 50% of those aged between 12 and 32 had listened to a podcast?within the previous month. Now, your podcast can be about anything related to your business so once again you can be as creative as you want in this respect. Plus, you will also be able to determine the frequency in which you release episodes, whether you want to invite guests to appear, where you promote your podcast, and how long each episode will be.

How Can I Create a Content Marketing Strategy?

1. Understand what you want to achieve

Every good strategy starts with a set of SMART goals. They should be specific and unique to your business and, ideally complement your wider brand and marketing objectives. Your goals may include:

- Increasing revenue

- Improving brand loyalty

- Boosting brand awareness

- Attracting strategic partners

- Building trust amongst your audience and prospects

2. Set your key performance indicators (KPIs)

KPIs will help you to quantify data points that you will use when measuring your performance against your SMART goals. So, if you want to increase revenue, your KPIs will help you to monitor site traffic and daily sales. Whereas if you want to improve brand loyalty, your KPIs will focus on product reviews, returning customers, and referrals.

3. Select your content format

Your choice of content should be informed by your audience and buyer personas. In addition to understanding what your audience needs from your brand, you should focus on creating content that will illustrate how your services and/or products will help them to overcome the challenges they are experiencing. The reasons why they require your service and/or product, the ways in which you can help them to succeed, and the places in which they spend most their time online will also inform your choice of content.

4. Identify target content channels

There are many places you can choose to share your content but which locations are going to deliver the best returns? Facebook content will clearly be shared on the Facebook platform but since various other social platforms also support video, you could also identify ways to repurpose video content to suit those features.

5. Create and share your content

Implementing a content calendar will help you to plan your content creation schedule and ensure that you are consistently posting to all your target channels.

6. Monitor results

You need to know that your content is driving results and a solid return on investment (ROI). Look at your SMART goals and your KPIs to determine whether your goals were achieved or whether your projections were inaccurate.

Content marketing isn't easy. There are many moving parts and myriad choices to be made at every stage. But getting it right could help you to drive success and place your business in a position to thrive, even in the most competitive online spaces.?

Want to know how to kickstart a killer content marketing strategy for your business? - Create with Kreate.

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