What is A Content Marketing Strategy?

Content Marketing Strategy – With the increased costs associated with mass media marketing, increasing competition across product or service categories, recessionary trends in the economy, companies are looking at alternate options to market their products- content marketing strategy content marketing benefits is certainly top on their list.

There are a couple of reasons why content marketing Strategy is favored by marketers- one is cost effective and second is the increasing penetration of internet and mobile phones that make it easier to access content anywhere.

Some of the media through which content of marketing can be done is through advertorials in newspapers and magazines, websites, emails, short messaging services in mobile, social media, blogging and guest columns in other sites. With internet access getting more universal, people tend to search information and data using search engines commonly now referred to as ‘Googling’ in view of the huge popularity of Google search engine.

Here’s a selection of 9 of the best content marketing Examples for beginners

The most common media to reach out to your audience is your own website. Here are some steps to optimize the website to get better results for your content.

1. Create a good website

People ‘google’ for information and land up possibly on your website and the first impression is always the best impression. The trend is now towards minimalistic design with main content on top and center with advertisement or promotions in sidebars. The lesser the clutter on the home page, and clear classification of sections the better. A good website design is as important as good content quality.

2. Redesign content every 2-5 years

Most companies have websites that are at least five or ten years old and not sufficient to hold the changes and variety of content created by the team that it will appear stale. Redesigning a website is a costly affair. According to Neil Patel, marketing expert, there will be a gap between the quality of content, the way the readers (consumers) perceive it and the brand as a whole. In the pre-smartphone era, websites were mostly seen by readers in desktop and laptop. Therefore, content and design were aligned more in a horizontal manner but with smartphones becoming more popular, there had to be a mobile site which is minimalistic in design and the main site also had to be mobile friendly allowing for vertical scrolling.

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3. Content Backup

Worse thing to happen is a site crash and to ensure that your content is safe, the web host should be directed to backup content periodically or cost-effective plugins are available such as BackupBuddy which will make a copy of all the content created. It may be stored in a drive, external drive or in a cloud. The content is divided into two parts-databases and static files. Databases contain pages, comments, posts, data and so on.

4. Create compelling content

When it comes to content marketing strategy ensure that the content is appealing to the audience and is not focused on the brands or products alone but has useful information on how to use the products, tips to improve the performance of the product, safety, and related issues. It is better to keep in mind the CURVE formula while creating content, according to Scott Sims, co-founder of Buzzlogix. CURVE stands for curiosity, urgency, relevance, value, and emotion.

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5. Create buyer personas

Most often companies have good products or services but no idea of the target audience and what information they require. Hence it pays to create buyer personas or fictional people who have the characteristics of the buyers you have in mind. Without knowing the audience, it’s not possible to create the content they want.

This enables to understand their worldview, develop better products and services. It allows you to find the places where the prospective customers spend time and help promote the content through the right marketing channels.

6. Understand their needs and requirements

It is important to understand the pain points (problems faced or requirements) of the prospective customer and address them in the content. Newspapers, magazines have columns to address certain issues that readers face and they could be a good start point to understand the problems faced by consumers. Quora.com is a place where professionals post questions regarding a variety of topics and get answers from people who wish to talk about it. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus can also be ideal platforms to launch questions regarding issues your customers face. Qeryz is a software that helps to set up mini-interviews and put them on the website or blog.

7. Understand popular topics that are read and shared

If your business is real estate, identify the keywords you have ideas to write upon and submit to BuzzSumo. It will list the top articles that were read, shared and commented on. This shows that people are interested in these topics suggesting they might read if we have better articles or the New perspective to give in those topics. Once, you have understood the top trending topics in your product or brand domain, think of creating compelling content with the CURVE formula.

8. Use the website for good customer service

The website should be a forum for customers to interact and share their views on which forms can be published with space to write their suggestions or problems. Having a toll free number, customer service email, and addresses of service centers and frequently asked questions (FAQs). The content of Content Marketing Examples should be used to engage and be in touch with existing customers as much as they tend to attract new potential consumers to your fold. Existing customers are fair prospects for repeat purchases. The websites and blogs should become good forums for sharing views about the product and brands.

9. Create premium content that can be sold

Free content can be used to attract new consumers but existing consumers may be interested in reading quality content even if that requires a subscription fee which can be used to make payments for writers.

Now here are the ways to improve content marketing strategy through blogs

Blogs are a better way to reach a wider audience: Blogs do not have a rigid format as a newspaper article or a column on the web. It allows the writer to express his or her thoughts, views and opinion and invite comments from readers. It could be related to the use of a particular application with free software as against licensed ones, and if your company is developing the application on an open source platform, it makes sense to write on the benefits of the open source technology. Blogs also rank better in search engines. A separate blog section can be created in the website itself or the free platforms provided by blogger.com, Tumblr and wordpress.com can be used to create content and shared on Twitter, FaceBook and Linkedin platforms for better reach.
Use images and infographics for better readability: It would always be better to have images, infographics to supplement an article as it can enhance the quality and understanding of the topic being discussed. The length of the article is also important for being rated better in search engines. Research indicates that articles with 2000-3000 words are more likely to get on top in search results.
Guest blogging: Apart from your own websites and blogs, you can also be a guest blogger on other websites that give content related to your product or industry. For Content Marketing Examples, if your product is a bio-fertilizer, the blog could be on how recent advances in bio-fertilizers have increased yield for certain kinds of vegetables. For people to search for products related to what you are writing about, it is not required that your brand should be mentioned it although you could qualify yourself as a representative of a bio-fertilizers company.

Email & SMS marketing

Email has become the most preferred communication medium for most of us as it enables instantaneous delivery of messages anywhere in the world. However, businesses have now targeted emails from customers to inform them about their new products, offers and to get new business. However, in order to not end up in a spam folder or trash, care should be taken to send it through an approved email application for bulk messaging. Emails are more likely to be open on weekends and holidays. A compelling headline, well written and edited content relevant to the receiver and there should be Call-to-Action buttons at the end of the mail – it could download a whitepaper, Apply, Register, Accept the invite and so on.

Social media content

With the number of users in social media rising day by day and predictions about FaceBook, Twitter et al becoming a medium in itself, content marketers need to actively concentrate on what they publish in the social media and it is not about sharing good articles from your blog, website or other news sites alone. It could be an about a brief description of a product launch, an event hosted by your company, or a new emerging technology, but they can all be briefly posted or announced first in the social media and based on likes and shares, more updates can be given. In FaceBook, prominence should be given to posts that have visual appeal where images count more than the words. It is better to have original pictures or stock images that have been paid for rather than copied from some other sites. For media, technology, service industries, it may be better to use Twitter while for corporate image building Linkedin serves better.

Conclusion

Content marketing strategy has emerged as a cost-effective way of reaching the target audience and ensure better returns on investment (ROI). Understanding how to use the various content options is vital to the success of this marketing strategy. There is a belief that more content will add up to more consumers or readers but quality matters most in the changed Google algorithm scenario. It is not enough to have popular keywords appear at random in your article or blog post, to what depth it has been covered is more important and hence the emphasis on quality. The Hootsuite’s Game of Social Thrones Video featured in Time, Fast Company, and AdAge which was viewed nearly a million times, making it their most successful piece of content. They took advantage of keyword volume and subject-matter relevance, using creativity and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

Content Marketing Benefits ROI should not be calculated on the basis of sales conversions alone but on other metrics such as brand awareness, email signups, social presence, brand-advocate input and website exposure. According to Micah Pratt, a leading content manager of Obrella.com, creating content pieces with a focus on different types of ROI metrics can help differentiate you from competitors. She says readers are sick of purely sales-centric content.

Content marketing strategy is a slow and sustained process. Therefore, Content marketing strategy should not expect results overnight. It requires sustained effort to create good content, engage with the customers, investment in SEO, post promotion in social media, which will bring returns in the long run.

At the backend, content developers and strategists should have the support of a robust content management system (CMS). They need to closely work with the developers to ensure that the solution meets their production, development and execution needs, according to Micah Pratt.

For long, the Content marketing strategy was too much focused on the keywords, but with changed algorithms in search engines and importance gained by social media, the popularity of a topic or article are dependent on a variety of factors including its relevance, importance, and urgency to the readers. In many industries, such as automobiles, mobiles, television, films, watches, consumer appliances, real estate, residential flats, interior design, architecture, product reviews count a lot. Hence, it is often good to establish a good rapport with influencers and product reviewers to give them adequate information. Content Marketing Examples For such products, the most content is written about would be by the reviewers and readers who respond to it.

Content is king, goes the old saying but if it is supplemented with style, elegance, good design, aesthetics, and relevance to a target audience, results would be encouraging.