10 Oct Everything You Need to know about Content Marketing

What is Content Marketing?

In the words of Ian Lurie, “Content is anything that communicates a message to the audience.” It is an ongoing process whose main purpose to attract and retain more customers.

Content is the backbone of any marketing campaign, encompassing not only textual content, but visual content as well. Videos, infographics, podcasts, eBooks, emails are all different types of content used by businesses to engage existing and potential customers.

Why your company needs to invest in Content Marketing?

Traditional marketing is becoming less relevant and effective day by day and most businesses are taking to digital marketing, specifically content marketing. Companies need to invest in content marketing strategies and campaigns to make themselves stand out from the competition. There are so many advertisements, both online and offline, that customers may easily miss your ad and it may not bring in the ROI you were expecting. Hence content marketing done the right way is a very effective tool to gain more customers and create interest amongst them.

And it can be very cost effective, when done well. A Depending on the size and nature of your business, you can set-up content marketing in-house or hire a professional agency to create your content strategy and campaigns.

It is always a good idea to plan and build a content strategy for your business to be able to convey its brand message instead of churning out content without any action plan in mind.

Content strategy:

Here are a few points to keep in mind as you build your content strategy.

Attractive Title

The headline of a piece of content is very important: the number of people who read the headline is way higher than the number of people who read the entire post. Make the headline attractive in order to catch people’s interest so they read the rest of the piece of content. Always include links to other content pieces and websites to increase cross traffic to your site and increase sales.

Add Value

Don’t try and hard-sell and push your product or service too much in your posts. Make the content informative and aim to educate the reader about your product so that they will be more interested in buying it without you trying to oversell it.

Content Length

Try writing longer posts with approximately 700-1,000 words instead of shorter posts. Longer posts help improve your website ranking and traffic compared to shorter ones.

Know who you are speaking to

Know your audience before you start creating any content. It is very helpful to create buyer personas and determine which stage of the buying cycle the reader is in. Once this is defined by your marketing team, you can design your content keeping in mind the end user.

Measure and Alter

Measure what is doing well with the audience and alter your strategy accordingly.

Content should be consistent, relevant and should add value.

Keep It Simple

Simple language is the best option to make it more relatable.

Always use simple language and avoid using industry jargon which may make it difficult for people to follow what you are saying.