Content Marketing – A Guide

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

People generally relate content marketing with advertising or SEO, however, content marketing is opposite to that of advertising. It is about engaging consumers with the stuff they really want. Content marketing is the creation and sharing of content in order to engage current and potential customers, thereby building trust with the audience.

Objectives of content marketing

1. Increasing brand awareness
2. Lead generation
3. Converting leads into customers
4. Building the image as the industry leader
5. Customer engagement
6. Customer retention » Website traffic » Sales

The Process

Every good content that you see has these major elements –

1. Engaging
2. Relative
3. Accurate

Content marketing consists of five key steps.

1. Plan – Content planning involves creation, publication, and distribution of a current marketing operation.
2. Create – The create part of the framework involves taking ideas, themes, and topics and transforming them into content.
3. Publish – Publishing content is the process that transforms the aforementioned raw content into a published asset or set of assets.
4. Distribute – Use various promotional tactics to distribute content.
5. Analyse – Content analysis involves measuring a content marketing program.

Defining a Content Marketing Strategy

1. Analyse the brand – Content Marketing will only make sense if it fulfills the goals of the company. If we are talking about business, the most logical goal for any company’s existence is profit.
2. Set up the USP – USP is s something that distinguishes your product/service from others in the same sector. It helps to build the foundations of the branding message.
3. Define the benefits of the product – While formulating a content marketing strategy there should be provisions for promoting the benefits of the company.
4. Target the appropriate audience- The next important question is the market that you are operating in, which can be important for certain formats and media for CM. If you are operating on the regional level and do not provide your services nationally, it makes no sense to target the whole country with your marketing efforts.
5. Set Specific Goal – Bearing in mind your product/service, your preferred market, clients’ communication, and buying habits, you are ready to set a content marketing strategy for your company. You probably would like this strategy to support the company’s business goals and sales.
6. Establish Timeline – Establish a proper timeline for the marketing strategy and segregate it into different phases.
7. Allocate a proper Budget- Without a proper budgeting plan, it would become impossible to implement this content marketing strategy.

As marketers, we are now operating in a world of “preference marketing.” Whereas once upon a time, marketing raised awareness, it now creates preference. The rise of the Internet and subsequent changes in technology has shifted the balance of power to the customer. They can search globally for goods and services, and purchase from anywhere too. The customer now has an exponentially higher number of options.

Also Read : How Search Intent Can Boost SEO Ranking