Ever wondered how to build your site through content marketing?
As the day goes by, Content marketing becomes more popular.
Various pages and sites including Google trends clearly indicate an increase in content marketing.
But first, what do you know about Content marketing?
I will be taking you through the meaning of content marketing, the businesses using it, and the type of content that works best for them.
Content marketing: The definition
What do you know about the history of content marketing?
This great marketing strategy has over time been defined and explained by scholars, business experts and marketers at large.
Content marketing has been defined as the process of creating valuable and relevant content for the sole purpose of attracting, engaging, and retaining a clearly defined target audience with the aim of generating revenue.
It can also be seen as a branch of marketing involved in the creation and distribution of online materials to stimulate the interest of its target audience towards its products or services.
There have been a lot of misconceptions as to whether content marketing is the same as advertising.
Both are entirely different. In fact, content marketing is the opposite of advertising.
While advertising is aimed at interrupting and distracting, content marketing focuses on attracting and assisting.
Advertising is done through TV ads, and content marketing via blog posts, ebook, et cetera.
Adverts are sometimes intentionally avoided and seen as annoyingly disturbing, especially as they pop up in-between activities such as watching the television or listening to your favorite radio station.
This isn’t the case for content marketing, which is seen as not being promotional, but educational.
It builds trust from customers in an exceedingly exceptional way.
This can be said to be one of the numerous reasons why it is gaining popularity.
On a side note, ensure your content provides useful and relevant value to your new and existing customers, and can help them solve their issues.
Inception of content marketing
Contrary to the belief that content marketing recently evolved, content marketing has always been around since time immemorial.
Entrepreneurs and business owners began applying content marketing techniques in the late 19th century, taking advantage of technological advances in communication.
From Benjamin Franklin promoting his printing business by issuing the Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1732 to Procter & Gamble broadcasting a radio serial drama in 1933, content marketing has always been practiced, but then, it didn’t have its present name.
The only difference is the fact that it is presently digitalized as against the manual method previously adapted.
Reasons why Content marketing is ideal for you
Deciding to adopt content marketing strategy for your business is something that needs to be carefully thought and weighed.
Besides the fact that it helps attract your target audience, there are a lot of reasons why you may need to adopt content marketing strategy, some of which are;
- Content marketing helps you expand your customer base
- It helps you generate or increase online business sales.
- Using content marketing, you have a high tendency of increasing your brand awareness and credibility.
- It lets you engage an online community of users
Users of content marketing
From sole traders to multinational companies, content marketing can be used by all types of businesses,
Some experts and content marketers gave their views on its usage stating they use it for their businesses.
For Melanie Tamble, the CEO of Adenion, content marketing has been in usage since time immemorial. She believes that content marketing was adopted by small scaled businesses due to their inability to pay the exorbitant fees needed for advertising. It has become rampant now as individuals now have the expertise to market their products and services in-house and on a moderate budget.
Content Marketing Specialist ‘Veronika Baranovska’ is of the opinion that content marketing helps an entrepreneur have an edge especially when small scale. For her, this is because hard sales are not as functional as they used to be.
She is also of the opinion that an entrepreneur can be helpful in his/her niche irrespective of whether he/she has a large market with thousands to spend on advertising.
Also, in explaining why he uses content marketing for his business, Ian Cleary the founder of RazorSocial states that content marketing strategy has greatly impacted in his business as it drives relevant traffic to his website therefore helping him build his audience, brand, and most importantly generate sales for him.
He further states that content marketing not only helps you generate engagements and revenue for your site, it also helps you develop your skill continuously, which comes to play in the quality of content you give your audience.
The best approach
To successfully utilize content marketing and its benefits, you need to experiment with series of content to clearly identify the one that works best for your audience and business.
From outsourcing your content creation, to using a small marketing team, there are series of methods and types of content you can adopt in your line of business.
In researching this, I have put together some types of contents you can experiment with. Some of them include;
- Case Studies
- Illustrations/Photos
- E-books/White Papers
- Pre-produced videos
- Social Media Posts, excluding videos
Like earlier stated, the content marketing strategy that works for XYZ Enterprises may not work for yours. You need to carryout experiment with the various types and methods in order to arrive at the one that best suits your business.
Wrapping up
Content marketing is concerned with attracting the attention of target audience and generating leads.
The reasons for building a site through content marketing cannot be overemphasized.
You do not need to have an exorbitant budget for you to market your content.
Ensure you practice using the various types of content.
There you have it!
I hope you now have a better understanding of content marketing, what it entails and how it is used as a marketing strategy by different businesses.