Content marketing

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating
and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and
retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable
customer action.
Content marketing is a marketing strategy used to attract, engage, and retain an audience
by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and other media. This
approach establishes expertise, promotes brand awareness, and keeps your business top of
mind when it's time to buy what you sell.

The definition of content marketing is simple: It’s the process of publishing

written and visual material online with the purpose of attracting more leads to
your business. These can include blog posts, pages, ebooks, infographics,
videos, and more.
Why is content marketing important?
Content marketing is a go-to tactic that’s proven to work. Also, it provides a competitive advantage. Take
a look at what the data says about content marketing:

● Businesses with blogs get 67% more leads than other companies.
● 72% of business to business (B2B) marketers say content marketing increases
engagement and the number of leads they generate.
● 88% of people credit branded videos for convincing them to purchase a product or
service.

Content marketing benefits businesses in many ways. When done right, an effective content
marketing strategy can:

● Increase online visibility. A content strategy can help you attract more customers and website
visitors, especially when people are constantly looking for solutions to their pain points. Offering
educational and informative content about a topic they’re interested in can help you increase
visibility online through your website or social media accounts.
● Generate more leads. You can increase leads when content marketing is used to drive traffic.
Since educating customers builds trust and helps them feel more comfortable purchasing from
your business, you can generate more leads and start to develop relationships with potential
shoppers.
● Boost loyalty. Loyalty is essential in marketing and business because the more loyal your
customers are, the more repeat purchases they’ll make. Offering content that informs
consumers can help them begin to build trust with your brand and see you as a thought leader.
 ● Improve authority. Developing content is ideal for improving authority and becoming a thought
leader in your industry. Not only does content help you build trust, but it can position your
brand as the most authoritative on a particular topic.

Content marketing works best when you have a well-defined strategy

and plan. If you post relevant and engaging content, it will drive traffic
to your website and boost sales. But, if you have not thought your
strategy through, you could be wasting your time and money. So, before
you even begin to think about posting content, you need to do some
research and formulate a plan. Here is a step-by-step guide to help you
devise a content marketing strategy and plan.

1. Establish Your Goals

The first step in creating your content marketing plan is to understand why
you are creating content. Do you want to generate more sales leads? Do you
want increased traffic to your website? Or do you see content marketing as a
means of establishing the authority of your brand? Once you have decided on
your objectives, you will need to set some targets. Where it is possible to do so,
those targets should be quantified so that you can assess the success of your
content marketing campaign.
2. Define Your Audience
Understanding your target audience is crucial to content marketing. Suppose
you want to attract a specific segment of the population. In that case, you will
need to understand what those people's likes and dislikes are. You will also
need to know what type of content will appeal to your target audience. The
next step in your content marketing planning is defining a persona for your
typical customer. The persona you create should include the standard
demographics of age, gender, location and income. It would help if you also
considered things like what your target audience's pastimes are, what their
concerns are and what motivates them.
3. Research Your Competitors
The next step is to investigate what competition you will face when attracting
your target audience's attention. But remember, it won't only be your
traditional competitors you will be competing with for people's attention and
time. There may also be content from sources such as news, reference and
entertainment sites that cover the same topics as your posts. When you
research your competitors, note what type of content they are producing and
what appears to have been the most successful. Also, find out what keywords
they are targeting.
4. Complete Topic And Keyword Research
Once you know your objectives and understand your audience, the next step is
to find out what your audience is searching for online. You will need to
research the keywords that people are searching for on Google and other
search engines. You can begin this process by investigating the search volume
for the keywords that you believe are relevant. Your keyword research will
likely yield some surprising results and give you new ideas for content.
5. Review Your Existing Content
You may also gain some valuable insights from the content that you have
already published. So, investigate what types of posts have generated the most
interest and which pages of your website currently receive the most traffic.
Also, research what keywords have been used by people to find your site. The
performance metrics of existing content will help you build up a picture of the
type of content that interests your target audience the most.
6. Devise Your Strategy
The next step is to plan how you will use the information that your research
uncovered. You will need to consider which platforms you will publish your
content on and what methods you will use to promote your content. You will
also need to think about the most appealing type of content for your target
audience. For example, would your audience be suited to white papers and
blog posts, or would videos and infographics be more appropriate? In most
cases, a mixture of many different media options will be the best approach.
7. Plan Your Resources
Your content marketing research will no doubt give you plenty of ideas. But
now, you must also look at what you can realistically achieve with the
resources you have. You will need to decide whether you will produce your
content in-house or if you are going to outsource content creation. You will
also need to appoint someone to manage your content marketing campaign,
and someone will need to respond to the comments and questions that your
content gets. Content marketing can be time-consuming, so you need to be
realistic about how much time you can devote to your campaign.
8. Plan Your Content Production Schedule
Now you need to bring all your ideas together in a content publishing
schedule. The schedule should contain a calendar of publication dates and the
personnel assigned to create each piece of content. A publishing calendar will
help you publish content regularly, which is a must in content marketing.
9. Create, Publish And Promote Your Content
Each piece of content that you publish should be created with your objectives
in mind. And remember to make use of the keywords that you discovered in
your research. Most crucially, keep the quality of your content high. Don't rush
creating content merely to meet the deadline on your content publishing
calendar. Once your content is published, you will also need to promote it. So,
share your posts on your social media accounts, and send the content to
anyone you think might be interested in the piece.
10. Monitor And Refine
The final step in your content marketing plan is to monitor the success of your
campaign, and, based on what has been successful, refine your strategy as
appropriate. Your content marketing strategy will evolve. So, you must be
flexible in your approach to your content creation.