What is content marketing?
“Content marketing is defined as the marketing process that involves creating valuable content and publishing it on the internet that attracts an audience, giving benefits to them, retaining them and finally making them customers after building a bond of trust with them”
Content marketing also called inbound marketing is the opposite of traditional marketing or outbound marketing. Today’s generation prefers the internet to get information, chat, or buy something. Most people hate ads and put on ad blockers on their phones or computers. Ads irritate us, isn’t it? Why should we buy something from someone, until we need it badly to solve our problem?
Content, Content Creation & a Content Marketing Agency
So far as the meaning of the content is concerned, it is the knowledge that a communication medium conveys. The Internet, movies, TV, radio, audio CDs, books, phones, and more all fall under this category. It is aimed at an audience or end-user.
For a user to succeed with content marketing, the content must be current, unique, helpful, and relevant. As a marketer, you should pay due attention to the content. It demands hard work, dedication and proper planning for content creation that works over internet.
Content marketing is the biggest marketing strategy being used nowadays by most digital marketers in digital marketing. A content marketing agency manages web content smartly to achieve desired objectives. Content management is not easy until you have prior experience in the field.
You must be very Knowledgeable about the Content you Provide
Traditional methods of marketing are dying. It, no longer, works. I would like to illustrate traditional marketing methods by taking TV ads as an example. Mobile internet has brought an end to TV, hence an end to marketing through TV ads. Traditional ads have been in use for a long time in the past, but the internet has put a full stop to it as things are shifting to online now. People do not like to get bombarded with ads. As a matter of fact, they need a solution or fulfill a need.
For this, they simply do research on the internet and get satisfied with a particular product or service they stand in need of. At this point, content marketing comes into play which addresses their issues and solves their problem. Content marketing educates, motivates, guides, or provides a solution to the problems of a particular group of people who are looking for it. Whosoever visits the internet can find specific information or a product or service at his liberty and will from a wide range.
If something valuable is published on the internet, people love to read it, get benefited from it, and also share it among their friends and groups. Social media plays a key role here and such informative posts go viral and reach millions who are already online. Credibility and Authority are established and connections take birth. People also love to come back to such online resources and a relationship is developed. Gradually, visitors turn into customers. It is a two-way process, where both are benefit. You give value and some benefit to your website visitors and in turn, you are benefited by way of sales you generate.
What is content marketing?
Why is content marketing important to your business?
- Digital marketing is proving a grand success for everyone who uses it accurately, the way it works. Some of the facts gathered from the internet about internet marketing:
- Now, it is a more than 400 billion dollar industry. More than 90% of businesses have already adopted it as an effective way of doing online business.
- It is 60% less expensive than traditional marketing and pulls in three times more leads and hence a boost in sales.
- Using a blog and posting valuable and informative posts on it boosts lead growth as compared to your competitors who do not own a blog.
- The blog pages are liked and loved by Google and given a good rank in search results, thereby sending more targeted traffic to the website. In short, Content marketing works. Those who do not pay attention to it usually fail in online business.
However, merely reading the marketing strategies and not applying them will not help.
You will never understand how it works. You need to learn, implement it, and see what works. Testing and moving ahead with what works for you is the key to success. Getting a degree in internet marketing will not help until you put knowledge into action.
What is content marketing?
Types of Content Marketing
Content brings miracles, when it is good enough for the readers. Good content never fails in attracting leads and customers. It works just like a sales person, motivating the visitors and converting them to customers.
1) Articles and Blog Posts
One of the most significant content types is articles and blog posts. Articles allow you to put down signature at the end of the article carrying your website URL that points to your website and take visitors there.
A blog is an online journal that allows you to write many posts and pages carrying useful content each pointing towards your website URL. Each blog post and page functions like roots of a tree. The roots pull water and nutrients and send it to the tree for growth and development. Similarly, each blog post and page at different places in the internet world pulls visitors and sends them to your main website for its growth and development.
Your website experiences a huge targeted traffic, leads and customers. In this way your business expands.
One of the best examples of blogging content where tons of useful information is created and shared to educate marketers is Content Marketing Institute. As a result, people follow them and attend events & training to learn new marketing strategies.
2) Info-graphics
Info-graphics are the visual representation of information, knowledge or data. They use images, charts or graphs for communicating the valuable information clearly and quickly.
3) Podcasts or Audio
A podcast is a digital audio file spoken by a person that can be downloaded for listening the episodes later. If you are a good orator, you can use podcasts for sharing useful information with your audience.
What is content marketing?
4) Video
The video marketing is the method of content marketing wherein marketers use videos to promote their products or services. In this way the audience is engaged with video content which results in driving traffic and leads with generation of sales.
The videos are entertaining and easily digestible by the viewer. The videos catch the user’s attention; creates a personal connection with him and he feels more confident while buying online. Also, the videos are shared more than text and images. YouTube is the biggest online video service where you can upload your videos for free and later monetize it also. According to a survey, about 600 million hours of video is consumed on YouTube per day.
The marketers use videos as part of their promotion campaigns for their business or brands usually on the social media engaging a specific group of people. It is estimated that video marketing is 600% more effective than email or print media. There are mainly four types of video marketing including Educational videos, Product or services videos, Testimonial videos and Company culture videos. Neil Patel is the Internet marketer making most of his video content.
5) Case Studies
It is another form of content marketing. It refers to a comprehensive study of some action in business that resulted into an enormous success in a particular situation. To promote your business or brand, you must reveal the secrets of your business in the form of a case study to your site visitors. You must disclose what you did and exactly how you achieved success in your business. This content marketing type is highly effective developing trust and online credibility, if you provide some proof to your audience.
What is content marketing?
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