As consumers become more demanding and better informed, a new form of marketing begins to gain more and more ground in front of traditional advertising methods. It’s about content marketing. In this article we will briefly explain what it is and how it works.
WHAT IS CONTENT MARKETING?
Content marketing is a soft-sell strategy. It is possible that at first glance you may not even consider it marketing, because it takes the form of information that you provide to consumers. But the purpose of providing this information is to capture their attention, which gives the content great persuasive power, if done right.
When we talk about content marketing, we are obviously talking about the creation, publication and distribution of content for a targeted market, usually online. It is a long-term strategy that helps to build trusting relationships with clients – potential and existing – through quality materials. This way you get brand awareness, brand trust and you strengthen a community around your name.
Moreover, quality content also supports search engine optimization, that is, it helps you increase the position of your website in the search engine results page.
HOW DOES CONTENT MARKETING HELP YOU INCREASE YOUR WEBSITE’S POSITION IN SEARCH ENGINES?
As you probably already know, the number one priority of search engines is user experience. For this reason, they periodically update their algorithms to offer Internet users relevant and valuable content based on the searches they perform. Thus, depending on the materials you distribute to your readers, search engines evaluate you and position you in the results page.
Okay, that’s if we’re talking about the content on the website, but content marketing is not limited to it, it refers to absolutely all the materials that can be associated with your business: the content on the blog, from newsletters, from the mobile application, from the networks social media, videos, articles and sites that talk about you, etc.
Since users consume information in huge quantities, being bombarded with it from all directions, the frequency with which they distribute material is an important element in feeding their need for new content.
Besides that, you also have to keep in mind that, once a content marketing campaign has started, the frequency with which you post will have to be maintained in order to keep the trust of the readers. If you start posting weekly, for example, and then slow down after a certain period, loyal readers who have become accustomed to reading you more often will think you’ve lost interest and will lose interest in you as well .
Let’s not say that Google likes prolific numbers, rewarding both quality and quantity. Therefore, optimize your content! This means developing a content marketing strategy based on a prior documentation of what users are looking for, how users are looking for them, how you can better answer their questions and how to compose texts so that they are as accessible as possible both for readers and for search engines.
WHAT IS A CONTENT STRATEGY?
A content strategy sets the main lines in the creation, publication and distribution of materials, and has clear objectives. Thus, before you start writing materials to publish in as many places as possible, determine what is most important to you and the steps by which you propose to achieve your goals – increasing brand awareness, increasing the degree of interaction with consumers , increasing the number of visitors to the site, increasing the number of sales, etc.
Although it is an important goal, more sales is not the ultimate goal. If you design materials focused only on sales, you will not be able to keep your customers interested in your brand, they will stop following you once they have purchased from you.
You have to keep their interest awake, showing them that they are important to you no matter what stage of the purchase they are in. Therefore, offer them valuable information and insist on forming a community around your brand.
Create content for each stage of the buying process:
Awareness – this is the stage in which the client realizes that he has a problem. What you have to do now is show him the solution to his problem and let him understand that you are there to help him.
Documentation – now the customer understands that there is a solution to the problem he has and will start looking for more information about the product or service that meets his requirements.
Analysis – in this stage the client compares the solutions he has found to make sure he chooses the option that offers him the best quality-price ratio.
Purchase – the customer decides to purchase the product.
Content marketing can be extremely effective in the first two stages of the buying process because it helps you raise awareness of available solutions and educate consumers about a product they would not have otherwise considered.
When creating content, don’t limit yourself to a single format, be creative and approach as many as possible! You can create general posts for Social Media, articles, guides, e-books, templates, infographics, videos, podcasts, etc., but regardless of the chosen form, it conveys the right information to the right target audience.
HOW DO YOU IDENTIFY THE RIGHT TARGET AUDIENCE?
To create quality content, you need to know who you are addressing. This means that you must clearly define your audience and give them as specific parameters as possible in order to design materials that will interest them.
Here are some tips for identifying the target audience!
- Target customers according to demographic criteria: women or men / age groups / location / occupation / income etc. Shape the customer profile even better, taking into account interests / hobbies / behaviors / lifestyle, etc.
- Before sending a message, make sure you know the problems your product or service solves and who it could help. Plus, find out what makes people buy.
- Ask yourself questions like: “do I have the right price for my audience?”, “what could attract people’s attention?”, “is the message I want to convey convincing enough?”
- Brainstorm with your team and put on paper all the ideas related to your business that could interest consumers. You can link to their searches in search engines, to the discussions you have with clients, to the feedback received, comments from social networks, etc.
Even if identifying the target audience seems like a difficult stage, you will realize that in the long term the efforts to send messages only to people interested in your product or service will save you time and money because you will no longer waste resources with the audience that has not the slightest interest in what you offer.
Do you want to know more about how you can integrate content marketing into your promotion strategy? Contact us and find out how you can take your business to the next level!
