Content marketing is a major element of inbound marketing strategies. It allows brands to assert their online presence through frequent and impactful publications. Adaptable to your target audience, this type of marketing has many advantages. We list 4 of them below. Finally, you will find at the end of the article 4 fundamental aspects of a good strategy in this field. But first, let’s look at the definition of content marketing.
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Summary
- Of what does content marketing consist?
- 4 remarkable advantages of content marketing
- Effective content marketing in 4 strategic points
Of what does content marketing consist?
Content marketing relies on a long-term perspective to make contact with prospects and customers profitable. The keystone of inbound marketing, this strategy consists in creating and distributing rich content optimized for a brand’s target marketing. By doing so, companies embellish their customer relationship management.
This tactic allows companies to control their communication and effectively convey their values. In addition, content marketing can even improve the emotional connection the public has with a brand. For B2B offers, content marketing is facilitated by a good understanding of the audience’s real needs. As a result, it encourages marketers and subject matter experts to collaborate more (Järvinen, J. & Taiminen, H., 2015).
Ultimately, sales and organic traffic are up, while customers are more engaged. In addition, content marketing attracts more leads. Also, it reduces advertising spend, especially if you focus on SEO rather than SEA.
4 remarkable advantages of content marketing
Brands are growing by leaps and bounds thanks to content marketing techniques. These techniques are particularly effective on many points. Here are four: finance, lead generation, customer relations, and brand awareness.
A financially viable solution
Content marketing relies in part on increasing organic traffic to attract an ever-growing audience. This is an inexpensive and profitable marketing strategy. Moreover, it can be produced in-house thanks to the technical knowledge related to SEO. Despite this, broad expertise in SEO allows us to establish a more global and impactful strategy. Thanks to the video below, we share the keys to success for better visibility.
There are several operational solutions to carry out an effective strategy. Here are some types of creations accessible to all:
- blog posts
- hosting branded podcasts
- video production
- creation of synthetic infographics
- social media posts
- email campaigns
Content marketing is a boon for online businesses, as it lowers the cost of customer acquisition.
Ideal for attracting more leads
Content marketing is known for its ability to generate many leads. This means creating content with high-added value. Indeed, your marketing target must find itself in your publications: they must be enriching and easy to access. In this way, you truly meet the information needs of your audience. Leading digital marketing authors recommend this, as shown in the video below.
On the other hand, large B2B companies will find additional strengths in digital events (webinars, virtual conferences, tradeshows, etc.) The leads skyrocket when top executives get involved in these events (Wang, W. et al., 2017).
With web-optimized publications, brands help improve the customer experience by simplifying information delivery.
Stronger ties between the brand and the consumer
Second, content marketing strengthens the relationship between the brand and the user. Here, the key lies in a brand’s ability to build trust with its users. Let’s take the example of Neil Patel to illustrate this point. This leading YouTube marketer earns the trust of his audience with his insights into digital marketing. His advice applies to everyone because he has mastered the art of popularizing marketing. Brands using these methods will be better able to convert their prospects and retain their customers.
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Maintaining strong links with its consumers means having a significant competitive advantage. To achieve this, companies can practice digital content marketing by playing on the following mechanisms (Hollebeek, L. & Macky, K., 2019):
- brand sensemaking: that is to say, the rationalization of its offer by consumers via the development of “plausible images” (Weick, K. et al., 2005)
- identification with the brand: the reputation, values, and experiences it offers are key success factors here
- attitude towards the brand: stronger customer relationships stimulate communities of consumers emotionally connected to the brand.
Thus, brands stand out because of a preference for relationship marketing practices. In the best cases, customers become brand ambassadors. This is when content marketing gives way to advocacy marketing.
Increased brand awareness
As mentioned, this marketing practice is based on the relevance of content to consumer needs. However, providing effective answers to these problems is not within everyone’s reach. Therefore, brand awareness benefits greatly from content marketing.
Explore many areas to understand better and apply SEO or paid search strategies. Here are some examples:
- Analyze SEO factors: click-through rate (CTR), cost-per-click (CPC), etc. This helps refine your view of the most interesting keywords for your brand.
- For your web domain: examine the dwell time on a page or the quality of backlinks.
- Evaluate the “health score” of your brand: this measures its notoriety over the long term. Social media marketing helps increase this score (Ahmad N. et al., 2016).
Effective content marketing in 4 strategic points
Now that we have seen the positive points of content marketing, let’s see how to implement it. Among the heaps of advice available, we propose to focus on the essentials. A good content marketing strategy is:
- understand the needs of the audience
- organize your editorial calendar
- optimize its content
- promote your productions
Identify the needs of your target audience
Content that meets a latent consumer need will find an attentive and engaged audience. And to do that is impossible without knowing your target audience. There’s nothing better to achieve this than to:
- To have recourse to desk research
- Consulting market statistics or consumer trends
- Maintaining a regular dialogue with users of social platforms
At the same time, brands must constantly ask themselves questions about their ability to understand these needs. So, the 5x5x5 methodology is the ideal partner for understanding consumers’ questions better. This model follows funnel marketing all its length and consists of 3 steps:
- Determine your top 5 audiences
- Analyze their top 5 questions, doubts, issues, etc., based on their location in the funnel
- Repeat this step for the other 4 stages of the marketing funnel
You will get up to 125 original questions to better understand your customers’ expectations.
Maintain an extensive editorial calendar
Then, it would help if you had an editorial calendar to maintain the pace of publication. This article gives you all the keys to boosting your SEO with this calendar. To summarize, here are the 5 essential steps to any effective publication calendar for a blog:
- 1. Fixing objectives
- 2. Selection of relevant keywords
- 3. Identifying must-see physical/digital events in your area
- 4. Definition of a publication frequency
- 5. Progressive filling of the calendar
The editorial calendar promotes internal collaboration and stimulates content generation and promotion.
Keep SEO in mind during the design phase
Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for content marketing. What’s the point of offering the best productions if your content is not referenced on Google? So, before writing, remember the second step of the editorial calendar: keyword research. Identify the terms with interesting volume, look at where your competition is on that word, etc.
But the truth is, the real SEO expertise lies in accumulating small details that make a difference for your site. So, don’t hesitate to seek help from experts in the field for your content marketing tactics.
Looking for inbound marketing experts for your brand? Get in touch with us!
Promote your content online with content marketing
Let’s conclude this article by talking about product content promotion. As for SEO, this step is of significant importance. A brand with a strong presence on both physical and digital channels facilitates its content marketing missions. Here, companies with sufficient means can play in the field of advertising:
- On Google (cf. Google Ads)
- On social networks (for example, Facebook ad targeting)
- Via influencers and micro-influencers, whose impact on the immediate increase of sales we know (Jarrar, Y. et al., 2020)
Posted in Strategy.
