Content marketing is a modern direction in marketing that allows you to attract an audience and increase customer loyalty, shape the image of the enterprise and, ultimately, increase profitability. Content marketing does not always require huge investments, unlike other types of promotion, and therefore is equally suitable for both small businesses and large corporations.
What is content marketing
Content marketing refers to the creation and distribution of relevant and valuable information to introduce, attract and engage the target audience. The ultimate goal is to obtain marketing benefits, say, increase profits or increase the number of customers.
Content marketing seems to be a relatively new direction associated with online resources. However, this type of communication has been practiced for quite some time. Take, for example, sending printed information products (say, newsletters, newspapers) by mail or email newsletters - all this is also a kind of promotion using content.
Why is it needed
Content marketing is suitable for almost any business. It is important to understand the basic principles and use them skillfully. Overall, this type of promotion allows you to gain authority and build trust with your audience much better than many types of advertising. With its help, you can create an image of a professional enterprise, reliable and progressive, arouse interest and create demand for new products or types of services.
Types of content
One of the significant advantages of content marketing is the ability to appeal to different audiences by age, education, interests, using completely different channels and formats. To be successful, you need maximum diversification and the creation of diverse, not only textual content:
- Video;
- Photo;
- Booklets (electronic and printed) ;
- Articles (in blogs and magazines);
- Podcasts;
- Events (for example, seminars or webinars, various lectures);
ul>Effective strategies
Planning promotion using content -marketing, you should, first of all, take care of preparing high-quality content. It is necessary to involve professional copywriters, photographers or SMM specialists in this. The content should be competent, unique, relevant and interesting to the target audience. Ideally, it should be viral - making you want to share your publications with others.
It is very important to decide on the specific niche in which you want to gain influence. It is impossible to cover everything at once, so it is worth taking small steps. Let's say, if your specialty is digital marketing, start creating content related to social media or even one network (say, Instagram or Facebook). Next, expand your topics, systematically moving towards your goal: to attract as many people as possible with interesting posts. Regularity of publications is an important condition for a successful strategy.
Analyze existing content on a given topic - probably a lot has been written on your topic, and your task is to offer something original and catchy. It also makes sense to study user requests in search engines to determine what truly interests your audience.
Various guides or instructions can be a good start - they are interesting and useful. The video instructions are especially good. Various publications about cases, market research and surveys, expert forecasts (including those from your company) are also quite informative.
Do not miss the opportunity to attend various events as a speaker - this will further emphasize your professionalism.< /p>
Distribution
Content distribution channels are of primary importance in content marketing. It is based on their characteristics and the characteristics of the audience that content is produced. It is important to remember that you will not achieve your goal if no one knows about your materials. Therefore, it is necessary to promote content in all possible ways:
- Publications on the website and in periodicals;
- Sending by email and direct mail;
- Posts on social networks;
- Uploading videos to YouTube;
- Collaboration with sites/blogs on related topics
It is also worth making efforts to expand your audience . Various competitions on social networks, bonuses or discounts for reposts work great.
Thus, becoming a leader in any industry is a difficult task. But effective content marketing can bring its implementation closer, gradually forming an opinion of your company as a reliable and professional partner who can be trusted. However, you need to understand that this is not a quick path, and make every effort to create and distribute truly high-quality content.