The Fine Art of Content Marketing

Overview:

●?????Content marketing can increase your sales with more loyal customers while costing you less than other marketing strategies

●?????Consumers prefer content marketing over other forms of marketing

●?????There are many different types of content marketing strategies that companies can use to attract different types of clients

Imagine if your ideal clients not only viewed the marketing material that you or your business produced, but also went out of their way to regularly seek out those materials and spend anywhere from 5 to 45 mins engaging with it?

That’s the goal of effective and creative content marketing. The Content Marketing Institute, one of the top online resources for all content marketing related information, uses this definition;

“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

The only difference between this definition and the definition of every other type of marketing is the word “valuable”. Instead of just marketing your products and services, you are sharing interesting and functional content to your customers that is related to your product. If a piece of content is something that consumers enjoy watching, rather than something they would try to avoid, it is likely part of a content marketing campaign.

Let’s take a look at JetBlue’s engaging Youtube Video Marketing Strategy as an amazing example of effective and creative content marketing that generated incredible results. They created fun educational videos about all things related to aviation and travel that not only gave potential clients valuable information but also advertised their brand mission to provide quality service. The result? Their videos attracted thousands of views which allowed them to set themselves apart from their competitors.

A whopping 70% of consumers have?reported that they prefer content marketing and it costs 62% less on average compared to other kinds of marketing strategies! If you are thinking about integrating content marketing into your overall marketing strategy for your business, here are our top 3 different types to try for your business.

1. Blogs

Blogs, like this one, are one of the most common forms of content marketing because of its ability to be engaging for your audience while having a low cost (Blog’s make up 86% of the content marketing out there according to The State of Marketing Report, 2019 ). Businesses that use blogs as part of their content marketing strategy receive more visitors to their websites and 434 percent more indexed pages for the SERPS .

Blog posts are most effective when used to talk about topics related to your products and services, rather than ranting and raving about your product or service directly.?By giving your clients valuable information about topics they are interested in, you set yourself, or your business up to be viewed as an industry expert, who, in turn, would likely have the best quality products and services in that industry.

Consider using various forms of blog content marketing to see which works best for your business, such as text based blogs, video content, and webinars. Also, do your research to ensure you are using blogging best strategies to ensure your efforts are successful.

1. Podcasting

55% of adult Americans have reported listening to podcasts , a number that has grown by more than a third since 2017. Podcasts are growing in popularity making it a smart option for businesses with a young audience.

Base your podcast episodes around subjects related to your industry, product or services. Ask yourself, ‘what are the common questions my clients would have?’ and answer them in each episode. Consider inviting people who are more experienced and knowledgeable in specific topics to be a guest or encourage listeners to get involved by providing the questions or giving their input.

1. Visual Content

Visual content?marketing is using images to share valuable information in a visually appealing format. There are many types of visual content such as infographics, images with educational text or an inspiring quote, memes, and short animations.

Visual content marketing is one of the fastest and easiest to consume of all the forms of content marketing, making it great for businesses whose clients don’t have a lot of time or have very short attention spans.

There is a 200% share rate for articles with images every 75-100 words to help readers quickly digest the information and a 150 retweet rate for tweets with visual content and images/videos are still the most engaging types of posts on facebook.

Be sure to use your company's logos, fonts, and image style to maintain brand consistency and contribute to building trust with your clients. There are several easy to use image creation programs out there and, if you want to truly customize your imagery, consider outsourcing.

Conclusion

The best tip to ensure that your content marketing campaign is successful is to hone in on what your audience needs and develop engaging content that gives them what they need in the form they would interact with best. It’s about knowing your audience well and using what you know about them to connect with them.

This is a lot easier said than done and requires a lot of experimentation and adjustment as you go. Be sure to track your success with analytics data in order to know which aspects of your strategy are working or not working.

Outsourcing to a successful and knowledgeable marketing company that is familiar with your industry could be a sure-fire way to ensure your efforts are successful while saving you time and money.?