There is no doubt that today if we want to have a presence for our clients, having an online presence is essential for it. But it is not only to be present on the web, but how to stand out from our competitors and attract the attention of the audience..
To achieve this, it is essential that we carry out Inbound Marketing strategies, highlighting among them the content marketing strategy which is used and recommended by more and more experts.
What is Content Marketing or Content Market
Content marketing is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on creating and distributing content that is relevant and has value to a targeted audience. The objective of content marketing is to attract customers, so that the business model is profitable..
What is the content?
First of all we must start by knowing what the content is. When we talk about content in this context, we are referring to the information that is consumed by users. The content can be in different formats, such as text, images, videos, audio, infographics, presentations, among others, and it can be informational content or entertainment content.
Content is any informational or entertaining material that is created and shared with an audience to fulfill a specific purpose. In the context of content marketing, content is created with the goal of attracting and retaining an audience to drive profitable action for a business.
Content Marketing focuses on building customer loyalty, so that they choose your brand, thus generating user retention. A good content marketing strategy must be constant and focuses on the company being able to communicate through its own media. This type of strategy must be natural for us to generate trust and lasting relationships over time with the customers we want to retain.
To achieve this, we must comply with the following:
- Attract the potential customer: through relevant content that is interesting to them.
- Convert: At this point what is sought is to transform visitors into leads, who are interested in your business and become potential customers.
- Sell: If your lead is interested in the product or service that your company offers, it is best to show them that what you offer is the best option and close the sale.
- Conquer: the relationship between your company and the customer does not end after the purchase. Looking for a long-lasting relationship with interesting and competent content.
The objective of content marketing is not to execute an invasive strategy, but to maintain a relationship with the client, making them see through our content that we can help them solve their needs thanks to our products or services..
Next we will make an analysis of the benefits, the fundamental pillars and the advantages of creating a good content marketing strategy or content marketing.
1 Benefits of an effective content marketing strategy
If we have a good content marketing strategy, we will see that it is beneficial for different aspects of our business and to have more relevance in the eyes of the users or clients of our company. Among these benefits, we can highlight the following:
Generate organic traffic
Quality content can drive organic traffic to a website through search engines like Google, which can increase our brand visibility and improve our ranking in SERP results. This traffic will be of great value to us since users will have found us naturally on the web. In this way you will increase your visibility online
Generate loyalty
Another of the benefits of content marketing if it is of quality, is that you will generate more contacts if you manage to retain them. In this way, your potential customers may become recurring customers. Loyalty is essential in Marketing, since the more reliable clients you have, the more profitable your business will be.
Improve brand authority
Another benefit of creating good content marketing is that if customers or users consider you specialized in a specific topic, this will improve your authority in that market niche. In addition, your brand will have more prestige and will be more recognized.
Increase engagement
High-quality content can spark conversations and debates on social media, which in turn can improve engagement and brand interaction. This means increasing the participation and level of interaction of customers or followers of a brand in its content and publications.
Generate leads
Content marketing can attract quality leads (potential customers) through signup forms or information requests, which can become sales opportunities.
Improve ROI
ROI ("Return On Investment" or "Return on investment"). Thanks to content marketing, in the long term, you can reduce customer acquisition costs and increase return on investment (ROI) by improving customer retention and loyalty.
Generate sales in the medium term
Despite the fact that the main objective of companies is to achieve sales, with the content marketing strategy we are seeking to focus our content production on guiding our leads so that after the purchase process they arrive prepared for decision making and this be satisfactory.
That is why business opportunities arise naturally when the content strategy is carried out in a disciplined manner and following good practices.
2 Fundamental Pillars Content Marketing
The fundamental pillars of content marketing are the essential elements to consider when creating and executing a profitable and effective content marketing strategy. That is why when creating our content, we must take into account the following.
Strategy
The first thing that we must take into account when starting is to establish a clear strategy in which we decide and define the target audience and what our objectives are with it. At this point we must also decide what the content production, distribution, promotion will be like and how we are ultimately going to measure these results.
quality content
Quality content is the second fundamental pillar of content marketing. It refers to the creation of useful, relevant and attractive content that responds to the needs and questions of the target audience. This content can be divided into the following types:
This content is the one that is related to all the topics about your product, but not your product itself. At this point is where you can expose your product as necessary to satisfy the needs of the consumer in different scenarios that may arise.
An example of this can be in a pet food store, talking about the benefits of a certain type of food for cats.
Educational content will allow you to teach your audience how to use your product or service. At this point you can teach, for example, based on the previous example, how much according to weight you should give your cat and what are the best hours of the day for it. In this way they will be instructed on how to use the product.
Your time has come, and to promote your product. The promotional content will serve to promote and expose your offer to your target audience. Here you can let see the catalog of your products and it is also interesting that you talk about the advantages and benefits over the competition. However, you must be careful not to fall into value judgments.
Finally, we cannot forget this pillar when creating content such as entertainment. It is basically creating content that brings you closer to your audience and you get much closer to your audience to encourage engagement.
The entertainment content may vary depending on the company, and the way it is applied. For example, some brands bet on the use of memes (humorous), but others prefer motivational phrases among many other options.
Continuing with our example, one option could be content about influencers' pets.
Distribution
Distribution is the third pillar of content marketing, which refers to the promotion and dissemination of content through different media. It is the process of sharing, publishing and promoting your content. It is the way in which you are going to provide your audience, the way in which they can consume your content through various formats.
In this sense, we find a large number of types of content for distribution such as the following:
- Contents in social networks
Measurement
Measurement is the fourth pillar and it is essential to evaluate the success of the content marketing strategy. At this point, data must be collected and analyzed to determine the performance of the strategy and make adjustments to improve the result. In this way, you will be able to optimize your strategy and improve it.
Content marketing measurement is crucial to assess the effectiveness of a strategy and adjust it accordingly.
The main factors that we must measure are the following:
- Website Traffic – Website traffic is an important indicator to measure the success of a content marketing strategy. We may analyze this data through analytics tools such as Google Analytics.
- Time on the site: the time that users spend on the website will be a good indicator of the quality of the content that we are offering them. The more time users spend on the site, the more likely they are to find our content of interest to them.
- Social sharing: The number of times the content is shared on social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn, is a good indicator of the relevance and quality of the content.
- Lead generation and sales: The number of leads and sales generated through content can be an important indicator that it is working and of quality.
- Return on Investment (ROI): ROI is an essential indicator to determine if the investment in content marketing is profitable. ROI can be calculated by dividing the revenue generated by the total cost of the campaign.
3 Best Practices in Content Marketing
It is important that when we carry out our Content Marketing strategy, we take into account certain practices so that it is more effective and the results are better. In this way we can, if not make sure, at least be clearer that the content we are creating has a good approach and meets these requirements.
Know your audience
In any content marketing process, it is important that we know our audience. In this way you will be able to offer valuable content to your target audience. That is why it is important that we keep in mind who our ideal client would be, since this will make us offer them content that they really want and are interested in.
be constant
Another thing that we must take into account in our content marketing strategy is that we must be constant. This means that we must be continuously active, creating entries for our blog, generating new content, improving the content already created on a regular basis. For this we can create a calendar.
Do a review before publishing
It is important that we know what we are publishing, so carrying out a review before carrying out the official publication is important, so as not to fall into errors and have to make changes. In this way we will be avoiding errors that can negatively affect our brand.
Analyze your dissemination strategy
It will not do us any good to have a high-quality product and content, if users do not get to see it. That is why our dissemination strategy must be effective in this sense, so that in this way we can make sure that it reaches our potential customers.
take advantage of the trends
As we already know on the internet, there are things that become a trend and go viral, but that last for a short time, so we must be aware of this in order to take advantage of this type of occasion and make our content fit these moments.
Reuse your content
Another of the practices that we must carry out in our content Marketing strategy is to reuse content that we have created but that has not lost value over time. Review how you can reinvent that content so you can update it and publish it again.
In conclusion, content marketing is a fundamental strategy for any company that wants to succeed in the digital age. Quality content can attract new customers, increase the loyalty of existing ones, and improve rankings on search engines like Google.
In addition, with content marketing we will be able to establish lasting relationships with our clients, by offering them useful and interesting information. In this way you will also have more knowledge about the company's products. That is why it is very important that companies invest in the creation and distribution of quality content to improve their presence in the online world and thus increase the probability of success in today's digital market.