Content marketing or content creation is talked about a lot in relation to marketing activity, but do you know what it means and how it can be important for your business?
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach which focuses on creating and distributing valuable and relevant content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. This content will drive profitable customer action, whether it’s booking an appointment or making a sale.
Content marketing is at, it’s core, educational and not promotional. It is designed to be valuable, to start or build upon a relationship, increasing trust and visibility of the brand.
But why is content marketing important for your business? There are several different reasons, but a solid content marketing strategy helps many aspects of your digital marketing. The benefits of content marketing include increased online visibility, increased engagement and ultimately increased leads.
Your content marketing strategy should come before anything else you do as this will help you plan and understand what content is valuable to your target market. Once you have done this, you can then think about creating content for different digital channels e.g. social media, newsletters, website etc.
An effective content marketing strategy will deliver useful, engaging information to your potential customers across a number of channels. For example, a blog article created for your website can be repurposed in many different ways, such as a newsletter, social media, video etc. This has the added benefit of saving you time in the long run.
Content creation is also important for these areas as well;
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – search engines like Google reward businesses that publish good quality, consistent and valuable content on their websites.
- PR – are you interested in generating PR content for your business or brand? Successful PR strategies focus on issues your audience cares about, not the business itself. Focusing on the right content is key and research can help understand what will resonate with your audience.
- Pay per-click (PPC) is when you pay for ads and for each click on them, however this relies on having good quality content to hook the user into your website.
- Data – are you planning on increasing your email subscriber list? Content is key to creating emails that drive traffic and leads for your inbound marketing.
Content marketing requires work, persistence from all parties involved and patience for the results to come in but it can have many benefits to your business.
- Your content marketing strategy can make sure you’re found by the right people and potential customers. Answering people’s key questions by creating blog posts, eBooks or videos for example can be a good place to start.
- Your content is only as valuable as its ability to attract new people to your business and compel them to engage going forward.
- Content marketing can help acquire new customers. You’ll become a trusted source for them and they’ll want to hear from you and purchase your products and services.
- You’ll be able to develop relationships with existing customers so they become more loyal, which potentially increases sales through cross-selling or upselling.
However, the digital landscape is constantly evolving, and as a result, we will see significant changes and trends in content production that will shape the way businesses interact with consumers.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most transformative forces driving this evolution. AI is already offering numerous benefits through content creation tools that are revolutionising the way content creators write and improving consumer experiences. But there are pitfalls to this technology and human intervention is still required.