Content marketing is the “art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling.” It’s the practice of delivering information to your audience that educates them rather than sells to them.
Essentially, your content strategy will allow you to give your audience of potential customers consistent, valuable, educational information and be rewarded with new business and customer loyalty.
Content is the presentation of information for a purpose to an audience. It can come in many forms: blogs, graphics, videos, podcasts, infographics, and more.
Content marketing + value
Useful content should be at the core of your marketing strategy.
In content marketing, value is the key word. Valuable content is that which people seek out and want to consume. If you want to set your business apart from the others in your industry, then you must find out what it is your target audience wants to learn.
Don’t forget – the content you create and publish should be focused on QUALITY.
How do I do that?
First, you have to do your research. Get to know your ideal customer. Find out what they’re searching for, what problems they face, and what you can do to help them solve those problems.
Then, you need to experiment to find out what type of content best captures their attention. Give everything at least a try before you decide what works and what doesn’t. Varying the type and presentation of information you offer will also help retain the interest of your audience, so look for ways to share creatively.
Content marketing + attraction
Content is crucial to attracting potential customers, converting them to paying customers and turning those customers into promoters of your brand or business. Publishing blogs and social media posts are part of attracting your target demographic and turning them into visitors. Once on your website, forms, calls-to-action, and landing pages work to convert visitors into leads. Emails, smart content, and all of the previously mentioned forms of content are part of content marketing, and they help you turn leads into customers and customers into promoters.
Content marketing + social media
As mentioned above, social media is a major part of the attraction stage of the inbound methodology, but it never loses its relevance. In 2021, there are 3.78 billion social media users worldwide. If you don’t know why your business needs to be on social media yet, that’s your answer.
Social media platforms are the channels by which you’ll disseminate the valuable content you’ll create, and each platform needs its own content plan as part of your overarching digital marketing strategy.
The key takeaway here is that if your business hasn’t taken advantage of social media yet, it’s missing out on a huge audience of potential customers.