When to Use Content Marketing

The catchphrase ‘content is king’ has garnered quite a bit of buzz over the last few years. There have been a variety of opinions about this phrase, but ultimately content sets itself apart from other divisions of digital marketing like social media marketing or search engine optimisation (SEO).

Emails, tweets, product descriptions and landing pages can all be considered examples of marketing content. So let’s take a look at content marketing and when it should be used!

What is content marketing?

According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), “content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Content marketing can involve the creation of several types of products, such as:

• Infographics: An infographic is a visual representation of any data or information with images, charts and short texts, so they can are an effective medium of communication on websites and social media.

• Videos: This form of content marketing has been surprisingly untapped because people assume that it is difficult and expensive. However, with the falling costs of professional video and audio equipment, creating video content has become easier. For example, Gary Vaynerchuk used YouTube to video market his family’s wine business. Through these videos and other online marketing, his business garnered a net worth of US$60 million.

• Books: Marketers can create books as content marketing tools. For example, Michael Port’s book, ‘Book Yourself Solid’, might be a great read, but it is used as a means to attract people towards his speaking and coaching services.

Why should you use content marketing?

Take a look at the four main reasons why content marketing is so important:

• Increase sales: Content marketing helps organisations boost sales. A marketing survey recently conducted by theContent Marketing Association (CMA) shows that at least 50% of consumers said that content marketing assisted them in purchase decisions, and 61% of consumers agreed that it helped increase brand awareness and positivity.

• Retain customers: Customer retention is extremely important for organisations to get a leg up on the competition. Content marketing helps retain customers with engaging and interesting editorials on the organisation’s products or services.

• Brand reposition: An excellent content marketing strategy can help brands who are looking to reposition themselves. This can be done in the following ways:

• Create content aligned with consumers’ lifestyle instead of describing the product’s features: Most consumers are not interested in reading about the technological superiority of one product over another. Instead, they are attracted by how the product can help them. Steve Jobs played this game very smartly by pitching the iPod concept as “1,000 songs in your pocket”, rather than pitching its storage capacity.

• Create content that differentiates your brand from the competition: According to Joanna Wiebe, author of The Startup Guide to Differentiation, brands can differentiate themselves from the competition by paying attention to categories like customer focus, product innovation, target audience and price of the product.

• Obtain customer insights and tailor your content based on data: Analysing the customers visiting your website or social media can help determine your target audience. Once the data is obtained, the organisation can create content that is positioned to attract the target audience. For example, your organisation is designing a payroll software, so you expect your target audience to be HR managers. However, the data shows that the customers visiting your website are mainly restaurant owners as they are looking for a way to properly manage their restaurants’ payroll system. In this scenario, the best option would be to create content that will attract restaurant owners.

• Engage customers in the long term: A proper content marketing strategy can help with long-term customer engagement. Communicating and sharing content regularly with your customers can help build a bond with them, as well as increasing their trust in your brand and making it their first choice. This can also set up a line of communication that provides you with feedback about your products and services.

Benefits of content marketing

• Content marketing increases conversions: According to a recent digital marketing survey, organisations that engage in content marketing, experience three times more conversion rates compared to organisations that use traditional marketing methods. In addition, it costs 62% less as compared to traditional marketing.

• Effective content increases site traffic: Creating and publishing quality blogs on a regular basis helps bring more traffic to your website. According to a study conducted by HubSpot, organisations that published more than 15 blogs in a month experienced almost four times more traffic compared to organisations that only published five posts or less.

• Quality content can educate customers: Imagine your customers have a problem and your brand has a solution for these problems. The best way to present this solution is to educate customers about them through interactive and engaging content. Develop content based around customer problems to make them understand how to solve them.

• Content is shareable: One of the best ways to increase brand awareness and reach is to have customers share your content with others. If you create relevant, spreadable content, your customers will want to share it on social media with others.

• Content marketing is adaptable: Content marketing can be effectively used in any industry, from technology to manufacturing to retail. The key is creating the correct type of content for your target audience. For example, if you are in the technology industry, creating content on topics such as the benefits of the Internet of Things (IoT) is more likely to attract customers than publishing a blog post on summer fashion tips.

How does content marketing help businesses?

• Improvement in SEO: Having an excellent content strategy that follows SEO guidelines will help your content and your website achieve significantly more exposure on search engines.

• Originality in content: Giving your brand a distinctive identity in original and creative content will help increase the public’s awareness of your business. Showing passion for what you do backed by hard facts will get your business noticed.

• Content marketing as a tool for public relations: You do not need to get featured on TV, take out print ads or hold press conferences to communicate with your audience and make important announcements - you have the option to publish news, blog posts or use social media.

If you are interested in content and want to pursue a career in content marketing, London School of Business and Finance offers a postgraduate in digital marketing.

This article was written by Varun Mehta and edited by Luna Campos.