Content marketing is a branch of Inbound Marketing, which is focused on creating and sharing content to attract the target audience of a brand. This content has to be of value to the buyer persona of the firm and distributed in those channels in which it is present.
After all, today, an online presence is essential to get new customers. This is something that all companies know, so it is no longer enough to be on the Internet, but to follow a series of strategies that make you stand out from the competition. In these times, the public has the ability to choose to decide the type of content they want to consume and the utility they want to give it. Therefore, the main objective of content marketing is to give your target audience the content they want. For this, this it has to have some utility for the Internet user and not just focus on selling the company's products. In this way, your public will have a positive image of the firm, since it has been helpful to them at some point.
What is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on attracting the public in a natural, silent and not at all aggressive way. It achieves this through four fundamental points:
- Attract
- Convert
- Sell
- Love
The process begins through the content creation and publishing that are relevant to the target audience. After this, the conversion of visitor to lead is sought. A lead is an Internet user who has given his data to your company and that appears in the database of this. Once this conversion has been achieved, the next step is transform the lead into a customer. Despite the fact that most brands consider that the work has finished here, the truth is that the relationship between the customer and the company continues after the purchase. This relates to the last phase of the process, that of 'enchanting'.
In short, as you may have seen, content marketing is present from the first phase of inbound marketing, being responsible for attracting visitors.
What are the benefits of content marketing?
increased traffic
Content marketing has multiple benefits for all those brands that carry it out. The first of them is him increased traffic to your page. This is because creating relevant content for your audience will improve your search engine rankings. In this way, you will attract new visitors, since they will find you more easily, being among the first search results.
Brand Awareness
The second great benefit of content marketing is the generation of Brand Awareness. Brand awareness is a metric in charge of Calculate consumer recognition of a brand. By producing and sharing valuable content for your target audience, you will create in them a positive vision of your brand. Among all the competition, a follower of your social networks or a reader of your blog will prefer to buy a product from your firm. Therefore, It will increase your notoriety.
Engagement
Third, Content Marketing achieves engagement. This term refers to the level of commitment that users have with your brand, being within the concept the interaction, perception and trust of users with the firm. At the same time, these users, who constantly interact with your firm, will be in charge of attracting new visitors, occupying the role of evangelizers.
market education
Content marketing aims to prepare users in the sales cycle so that they are able to make the purchase decision at the end of this. Therefore, this technique also has the benefit of educating the market, making them understand what the products you offer are for and how they should be used, this being another type of relevant content that will improve the Brand Awareness of the firm.
Increase sales with content marketing
As is to be expected, one of the great advantages of this type of marketing is the increase in sales. However, the vision of content marketing is to achieve this in a natural and non-intrusive way in which users become customers. at the time they need it. Since you increase your number of users by improving the positioning of your page with the creation of relevant content, the number of leads will also increase. If the entire chain is followed with discipline, these leads will become customers in the vast majority of cases, since they will see in your brand the best option.
Lifetime-value increase
As we mentioned before, the relationship between the brand and the customer does not end with the purchase. What is really beneficial for every company is to increase the Lifetime-value, which is the total cost a customer spends on your brand. By continuing to take care of this customer after the purchase, with good customer service and certain buyer benefits, this customer will want to repeat the experience.
Types of content marketing
There are different types of content marketing depending on the platform on which the message is disseminated and the format it is.
- Social networks: Social media is a fundamental part of any content marketing strategy. The real benefit of social media is that there are millions of active users on it. Through these, you can interact in a way much closer and more direct with your public.
- Blog: blogs are the main platforms of any content marketing strategy. These offer many advantages, since They fulfill an informative role and admit different formats. This increases the audience and the probability of conversion.
- Videos: The videos can be viewed on different devices, be it a computer, a tablet, or a mobile phone. Also, they can be published on different platforms. These, as if that were not enough, add credibility to the firm and connect very well with the public, being able to educate him through this content format.
- E-mail: email is another platform with many advantages. Most people use email, so you can reach a lot of people through it. Besides, does not require much budget investment and you can know how many people your content has reached, how many have opened it and how many have clicked.
How to create a content marketing strategy?
To create a content marketing strategy you have to follow different steps. All of them must be planned in advance.
The first thing to be clear about is the objectives of the marketing strategy. Defining goals makes it clear to the team what data to measure and what to do to achieve that goal. Without objectives, you don't have a place to go or a map to navigate. Mark a destination point and from there trace everything else.
When you have defined the objective of the strategy, you must delimit the key performance indicators. These are metrics that are used to measure the performance that the brand is having in terms of the objectives set. At this point it is important to clarify one issue. The metrics are necessary to avoid taking blind steps and to know when you should deviate from the marked path and when you should go in a straight line. However, it is not good to abuse them.
Some brands make the mistake of using countless metrics. This all it does is stun and overwhelm. Therefore, choose a KPI that suits your strategy and that is not difficult to understand and focus on it. For example, if your goal is to generate more engagement, you can check the number of social post shares or comments.
Once you have defined both your objectives and the tools with which to guide you, you will have to define your buyer persona. Based on your buyer persona, their tastes, concerns, and beliefs, you must prepare the rest of the elements of the content marketing strategy. After all, everything you do should be geared towards your buyer persona, to please you and move you further down the sales funnel.
You already have the goal you want to reach, the right people to accompany you and the tools to guarantee your arrival. Now comes the most important part: organize the content according to the sales funnel. In this way, depending on the part of the funnel you are in, you will have to generate a certain type of content.
Content Marketing Core
Content creation is the main element, the core of the strategy. To produce content, you don't just need to start writing. There are many issues that must be taken into account for this content to have the desired effect on users.
Keywords
The first thing you should do when creating content is to decide what the keywords for it will be. You should find out which are the most demanded keywords in your sector and focus on them. However, it is important to make a clarification at this point. There are many brands that focus on keywords and approval by search engines and that, unfortunately, forget the most important part of the chain: the user. The keywords they should never make the text difficult to read or understand. These should go unnoticed and should be introduced in a natural way, without forcing anything.
Length
Beyond the keywords, you will also have to decide what the length of your texts will be. Depending on the format and platform, these should be more or less long. In addition, you will also have to accompany them with other types of content, such as videos, images or infographics. This helps the scannability and makes the text more attractive to consume. For this, it is important that you help yourself with bullet points, words in bold and paragraphs.
Share the content
Once you have created the content, you will have to share it on other platforms. You can do this mainly through social networks, one of the most important channels in the current era. However, you do not need to be present in all of them. Focus only on those in which your target audience moves. In addition, you must adapt the message to each of them. It is not the same tone that is used on LinkedIn as on Instagram.
Beyond social networks, it is also convenient that promotions your content through e-mail. The difference between this and social networks is that the content reaches the user directly. Another advantage is that you can help the user to continue their journey through the funnel with different types of specific content for each phase.
In short, the first thing you should do to achieve a successful content marketing strategy is Know your target audience, your objectives and your firm. You must know what your possibilities are currently, in order to set realistic goals. Otherwise, the only thing you will get is frustration. If, once the objectives have been analyzed, you have verified that they are achievable for the company, begin to study your audience thoroughly. The most important thing of all is to plan each step from the beginning, to know each section of the road and to have the necessary tools for the journey.
