‍

Media Credit: Epiximages / iStock

Content Marketing: A Strategic Approach

Every day, you open your eyes to find your company joining thousands of others vying immediately for a human’s attention. And if those humans are your customers, they’re being hit just as hard by that same barrage of noise from your competitors. Your business needs to find a way to gain a hearing somehow. And if you want help coming up with ideas, content marketing is the answer. Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach – a focused and deliberate process. It involves creating and distributing valuable, relevant, consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and drive profitable customer action. It’s storytelling but with a business twist.

Content marketing emphasizes being ‘shareable’, or valuable for your audience to share across their social networks. It’s not salesy in nature. It’s informative. It educates. It provides value to ask for business. Good content makes a sale, and that sale is business.

So, what is content marketing – and what should you do differently to make your business stand out from the competition?

The Core Principles of 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.

There are a few core tenets of content marketing, including: 

Do your homework: Research your audience so you know how to engage with them by understanding what they want to read, hear or feel – are they tired, inspired or relaxed? – and what pains and fears they need to be addressed.

Determine your content strategy: Create an editorial mission statement that lays out the goals for your content, the audience you want to reach, the topics you will address, the keywords you’ll use, and where and how you will distribute it and measure the results.

Make it shareable: Create quality content regularly, such as blog posts, articles, infographics, videos or podcasts, that is well-written, comprehensive, and easily shareable while using the right search engine optimization strategies.

Improve for search engines: Do some keyword research. Research topic-related terminology and phrases that your target audience are searching for. Include these keywords naturally in your article to increase your tendency to place higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Market and distribute: Amplify your content across different channels such as social media, email marketing, paid advertising, and influencer collaborations. Test various distribution strategies to see what resonates with your audience the most.

Types of Content Marketing

‍

To keep your audience engaged, having an arsenal of content formats is critical. By playing around with the different content types, you can cast a wide net and ensure your message is seen by as many as possible. Here are some content marketing types for you to give a whirl, as well as an example of each:

This means you must offer different types of content to keep that audience engaged. By experimenting with various content formats, you can provide something for everyone and ensure your message reaches as many people as possible. Here are a few different types of content marketing to try, along with an example of each: 

‍

• Blog posts: Regularly publish articles on topics relevant to your target audience.some text
  • Example: HubSpot's blog provides valuable insights and tips for marketers.
• Articles: Write a long-form piece on a particular topic to position yourself as an expert and give your readers value. some text
  • Example: Intel publishes technical articles to demonstrate its thought leadership in the technology industry.
• Infographics: A quick way to represent complex concepts beautifully and make it easily consumable. some text
  • Example: Buffer has created numerous infographics on social media marketing topics.
• Videos: Produce videos to share tutorials, demonstrations, interviews, or behind-the-scenes content.some text
  • Example: Red Bull's action sports videos have become iconic in the extreme sports community.
• Podcasts: Make audio versions of your best content for those who prefer to listen while they commute to work.some text
  • Example: in his podcast The GaryVee Show, entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk talks about entrepreneurship, social media and digital marketing.
• Ebooks: Offer valuable resources like downloadable ebooks to attract and nurture leads.some text
  • Example: HubSpot offers a variety of free ebooks on inbound marketing topics.
• Whitepapers: Provide in-depth research and analysis on industry trends and challenges.some text
  • Example: McKinsey & Company publishes whitepapers on various business topics.
• Case studies: Share success stories to demonstrate the value of your products or services.
• 
  some text
  • Example: Salesforce often publishes case studies featuring its customers' success stories.
• Webinars: Host live online presentations to educate and engage your audience.some text
  • Example: HubSpot hosts regular webinars on topics related to inbound marketing.
• Social media content: Write posts, images and videos that will engage with your audience on social media.some text
  • Example: Coca-Cola uses social media to share humorous and relatable content.

The Role of Content Marketing in Engaging Your Audience

Content marketing works by the principle that you need more than a short message to build relationships with your audience or engage them. Build your audience’s trust by publishing regular content relevant to your sphere of interest, build a community around it, and give your community value. Here are some last bits of advice to help you give your audience value:

• Know your audience: what are they interested in? What do they already know about your topic? Where’s the gap between what they know and what they need to know? This is the point where you deliver value-packed content for your audience.
• Be relatable: Appeal to your readers’ emotions by telling stories, making them laugh, and providing real-world examples. 
• Engage people: Reply to comments, answer questions, and respond to feedback to create a sense of community.
• Use interactive elements: Incorporate polls, quizzes, and contests to encourage audience participation.
• Personalize your content: Use data to tailor your content to individual preferences and interests.
• Be consistent and timely: Post regularly and reply to comments promptly to keep your audience engaged. 
• Track and evaluate engagement level: Use the data you get to see how your audience responds and modify your content strategy as needed.

Pros and Cons of Content Marketing

Pros:

• Brand awareness: Content marketing helps to broaden the reach or your brand.
• Better SEO: Creating good content for its sake and optimizing it for search allows you to rank better on search engines, leading to more organic traffic to your website. 
• Lead generation: Content marketing can attract potential customers and generate leads for your business.
• Empathetic customer engagement: Offering helpful and relevant content has the effect of building relationships with customers and engaging them with your brand. 
• Thought leadership: By establishing expertise in your industry, content marketing helps you develop influence as a thought leader. 
• Increased sales: Content marketing can ultimately drive sales by attracting and converting customers.

Cons:

• Time-consuming: Creating and distributing high-quality content requires significant time and resources.
• Cost: Between the costs of writers, designers, producers and their assistants, content marketing can become pricey, depending on whether you’re looking at a small or large operation.
• Content marketing measurement: The return on investment of content marketing can be hard to get to grips with, especially in the short term.
• Keeping consistent: Posting content regularly is more challenging for smaller businesses with less money and time. It’s hard to stand out when so many others create content in the same space.

How to Create Your Own Content Marketing Plan

A good content marketing plan guides your content creation and distribution, keeping you grounded, organized and on track. Why your brand should have a content marketing plan:

• Your goals: A plan outlines what you want to achieve with your content marketing efforts – building brand awareness, increasing leads, or driving sales. 
• Speaks directly to your readers: Knowing your target audience will help you create content that will talk to them. Having a plan will help you define and keep in mind your ideal customer.
• Organization: A content calendar helps you structure your content creation and promotion efforts and avoid drops in your output.
• Keeps your brand consistent: If you employ a plan for your content, you can keep your brand’s voice and language consistent across all your content.
• Makes measurement easier: Setting KPIs and goals allows you to measure your content marketing results and to make informed decisions. 
• It saves time and resources: With strong content strategy guidance, you will not waste time and resources reworking plans and content to make it relevant to your audience.
• It helps establish your brand as an expert: recurring, high-quality content can help your brand build reputational authority around a niche topic.

Ultimately, a content marketing plan is the key that will unlock a strong content strategy. A plan is a means to an end, your workbook. It will help show you how to create and to measure content that enables your audience to take action and produces results for your business.

How to Measure the Effectiveness of Content Marketing

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable measurements that you can use to continuously monitor your progress and track success of your content marketing campaign. KPIs will report valuable insights into your audience's behavior and areas of improvement and will support your decision-making based on numbers. 

Other Metrics to Measure Content Marketing Success

• Traffic to the website: the number of visitors to the website and the number of page views.
• Quantifiable example for lead generation: This is how many potential leads you produced due to your content marketing objective, for example, how many email sign-ups or contact-form submissions.
• Conversion rates: This is the proportion of visitors who take action, such as buying from your site or signing up for your newsletter.
• Social media engagement: see how often your posts are liked/shared/commented on and how many clicks they get.
• Brand mention: Monitors social media, forums and other third-party websites for your brand mentions.
• Time on site: Measure the average time visitors spend on your website.
• Bounce rate: the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page.

Other Metrics to Consider

‍

• Email open rates and click-through rates: Measure the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.
• ROI: Percentage financial return derived from your content (a good rule of thumb is to record revenue brought in by investments into content marketing vs the cost) 
• Customer satisfaction: Use surveys and feedback to measure customer satisfaction with your content.

Steps to Measure Content Marketing Effectiveness

• Set clear goals: Define what you want to achieve with your content marketing efforts.
• Choose the right KPIs: Select the most relevant to your goals.
• Track your metrics: Use analytics tools to track your KPIs over time.
• Analyze your data: Identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement.
• Get smarter: with your findings, fine-tune your content strategy for higher outcomes. 

Tips for Effective Measurement

• Consistency: Track your KPIs consistently to identify trends and measure progress.
• Benchmarking: Compare your performance to industry benchmarks or competitors.
• Attribution: Use attribution models to determine which marketing channels drive the most conversions.
• Experimentation: Not sure which format, topic, or distribution channel will work for your audience? Test all of them! 
• Continuous improvement: Use your data to improve your content marketing strategy.
• Using a content marketing platform: These can handle your content calendar, help you track analytics, and even automate certain functions.
• Work with sales, marketing, and customer service: Collaborate with other teams in your company such as sales, marketing, and customer service to ensure your content aligns with your overall business objectives.
• Keep up with the news: Continually read and absorb the latest research, news and best practices around content marketing.
• With good content marketing metrics, you can refine your strategy and squeeze the most ROI possible out of your content marketing and hit those business goals too.

Brand Publishing as an Alternative

Brand publishing is a strategic approach to content marketing that involves creating and distributing content through owned channels, such as a company website or blog. Unlike traditional advertising, which is often intrusive and can be perceived as promotional, brand publishing focuses on providing valuable, informative, and engaging content to your audience. This allows you to establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry and build trust with your customers.

Benefits of Brand Publishing

• Increased Brand Awareness: By consistently publishing high-quality content, you can increase your brand's visibility and reach a wider audience.
• Thought Leadership: Brand publishing allows you to position your brand as an expert in your industry. This can help you attract new customers and build loyalty among existing ones.
• Improved Customer Engagement: When you create content that resonates with your audience, you can foster stronger relationships and encourage them to engage with your brand on a deeper level.
• Greater Control Over Messaging: With brand publishing, you have complete control over the message you want to convey. This allows you to align your content with your brand values and objectives.

Challenges and Considerations

While brand publishing offers numerous benefits, it also presents challenges. Some of the key considerations include:

• Consistent Content Creation: Producing high-quality content regularly can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.
• Resource Allocation: You must allocate sufficient resources to create, distribute, and promote your content.
• Measurement: It's essential to track the performance of your content to measure its effectiveness and identify areas for improvement.

By implementing a well-executed brand publishing strategy, you can position your brand as a trusted authority in your industry, build stronger relationships with your customers, and drive business growth.

How to Create Your Own Brand Publishing Plan

Steps:

1. Define your goals: Determine your goals with your brand publishing efforts. Are you aiming to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or establish yourself as a thought leader?
2. Identify your target audience: Understand your ideal customer's needs, interests, and preferences. This will help you tailor your content to their specific requirements.
3. Choose your content formats: Decide which types of content will resonate best with your audience. Consider factors such as their preferred consumption habits and the goals of your brand publishing plan.
4. Develop a content calendar: Create a schedule for publishing your content. This will help you stay organized and ensure a consistent flow of content.
5. Create high-quality content: Invest in producing valuable, informative, and engaging content that aligns with your brand's voice and values.
6. Promote and distribute your content: Share your content through various channels, including social media, email marketing, and paid advertising.
7. Measure and analyze your results: Track the performance of your brand publishing efforts using key performance indicators (KPIs) and analytics tools. Use this data to refine your strategy and improve your results.

Brand Publishing vs. Content Marketing: A Comparative Analysis

While brand publishing and content marketing are often used interchangeably, they have distinct characteristics and approaches.

Similarities

• Goal-Oriented: Both brand publishing and content marketing aim to achieve specific business objectives, such as increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or driving sales.
• Audience-Centric: Both strategies emphasize creating content that resonates with the target audience and provides value.
• Content Creation: Both involve creating and distributing high-quality content.

Differences

• Ownership: Brand publishing primarily focuses on content created and distributed through owned channels, such as a company website or blog. Content marketing can include both owned and earned media, such as social media and guest posts.
• Control: Brand publishing offers greater control over messaging and distribution. Content marketing often involves collaborating with external influencers or platforms.
• Focus: Brand publishing emphasizes building brand authority and trust. Content marketing can have a broader focus, including lead generation and sales.

In essence:

• Brand publishing is a subset of content marketing emphasizing owned channels and building brand authority.
• Content marketing is a broader strategy encompassing both owned and earned media and can have various goals beyond brand building.

While both strategies are essential for modern businesses, understanding their nuances can help you develop a more effective content marketing approach.

Content Marketing: Getting It Right For Your Business

Content marketing – creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers and clients – is an essential strategy that can be used no matter your business.

This doesn’t mean you simply produce content, post it on your site, and hope for the best. Any initiative that hopes to succeed as a content marketing strategy should start by understanding your audience, producing quality material, and making the material visible to search engines. Then, it should plan how to distribute that content online and offline and monitor its performance.

Although content marketing provides various benefits, we have to realize other approaches can also be followed like paid advertising, public relations, secondly social media marketing and thirdly email marketing. Best for the business will be out for you if you are consistent with your plan, decide your budget and sketch out your target.

Frequently Asked Questions About Content Marketing

How long does it take to see results from content marketing?

The time it takes to see results from content marketing can vary depending on various factors, such as the quality of your content, your target audience, and your overall marketing strategy. However, it's generally accepted that content marketing is a long-term investment. It often takes several months or even years to see significant results.

What is the best way to measure the ROI of content marketing?

Measuring the ROI of content marketing can be challenging, but it's essential to understand the effectiveness of your efforts. Some common methods include:

• Tracking website traffic: Monitor the number of visitors to your website and the pages they view.
• Measuring lead generation: Track the number of leads generated through your content, such as email sign-ups or contact form submissions.
• Calculating conversion rates: Determine the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action, such as purchasing or signing up for a newsletter.
• Analyzing social media engagement: Monitor metrics like likes, shares, comments, and clicks to gauge audience engagement on social media platforms.  
• Tracking brand mentions: Monitor mentions of your brand on social media, forums, and other online platforms.

How can I create content that is both engaging and informative?

To create content that is both engaging and informative, focus on:

• Understanding your audience: Know their needs, interests, and pain points.
• Telling stories: Use storytelling techniques to make your content more relatable and memorable.
• Using visuals: Incorporate images, infographics, and videos to break up text and make your content more visually appealing.
• Providing value: Offer information that is useful and relevant to your audience.
• Using a conversational tone: Write in a friendly and approachable style that resonates with your audience.

What are some common mistakes to avoid in content marketing?

• Creating low-quality content: Ensure your content is well-written, informative, and visually appealing.
• Ignoring your audience: Tailor your content to the needs and interests of your target audience.
• Not promoting your content: Share your content on social media, email, and other channels to reach a wider audience.
• Failing to measure results: Track your KPIs to understand the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts.
• Over-promoting your brand: Focus on providing value to your audience, rather than simply promoting your products or services.

How can I stay up-to-date on the latest trends in content marketing?

To stay informed about the latest trends in content marketing, consider:

• Following industry influencers and publications: Subscribe to blogs, newsletters, and social media accounts of content marketing experts.
• Attending conferences and webinars: Participate in industry events to learn about new strategies and best practices.
• Experimenting with different content formats: Try out new types of content to see what resonates best with your audience.

What are some alternatives to content marketing?

While content marketing is a highly effective strategy, there are other marketing approaches you can consider:

• Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising: This involves paying for ads that appear at the top of search engine results pages or on social media platforms.
• Public relations (PR): PR involves building relationships with media outlets to generate positive publicity for your brand.
• Social media marketing: This involves using social media platforms to promote your brand and engage with your audience.
• Email marketing: Sending targeted emails to your subscribers can be a powerful way to reach your audience and drive sales.

Ultimately, the best approach for your business will depend on your specific goals, budget, and target audience.