What is content marketing and what are its benefits?
Imagine the following scenario:
You want to buy a lawn mower to cut the grass at your home, which has grown over the past few months, but you're not sure which option is best for you, and you don't know who could give you a good product recommendation.
So, to select the best product for your needs, you start researching online. You go to Google and type "best lawn mowers," and you find an article titled "The 10 Best Lawn Mowers for Your Home." You click on it and read.
In the article, you find several models and brands that could help you cut the grass at your home. However, you're still not convinced by any of the products.
You begin to search for more information and watch YouTube videos on how to choose a good lawn mower.
As you watch the videos, you start to familiarize yourself with the different tools for cutting the grass at your home. You learn that there are gas and electric mowers for cutting large areas, manual mowers that don't require electricity or gas, and trimmers and edgers for cutting edges and corners of a garden. You discover how these tools work, their advantages, and in which cases you should use each one.
You start to learn about the best lawn mower brands. You read product reviews on Amazon, Mercado Libre, Home Depot, and other websites to get user opinions.
You progress in your research and find a brand you like a lot. You visit the company’s eCommerce site, browse their products, and find a specific lawn mower that could solve your problem. You go to the product page, see the photos, videos, and descriptions, and convince yourself that it’s the best option for you. You complete your purchase right then and there.
This is the current process for digital users to select the best product and brand for their needs. Throughout the process, they relied on educational content to understand their options and make their final purchase decision.
However, it’s very common to see companies that only talk about how great their product is, with the sole purpose of selling. They don’t guide the customer on how to solve their problem or what options are available.
Selling your product directly and invasively to customers no longer works. It’s like talking to no one.
Content Marketing proposes a more organic way to engage with customers through valuable content to convince them that your product is the best option.
What is Content Marketing?
Content Marketing is a strategy for creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience.
Basically, Content Marketing involves creating content such as articles, images, videos, podcasts, whitepapers, webinars, meetups, conferences, and studies to attract new customers, retain your users, and increase your business sales.
It’s used to drive your consumer to action, but instead of just presenting your products or services, you must provide truly relevant and useful content to help them solve their problems.
Through content, you can enrich your user’s experience, position your brand in the market, and make customers think of your company first when it comes time to buy.
The consistent use of content marketing establishes and fosters relationships with your potential and existing customers. When your audience sees your company as a partner interested in their success and as a valuable source of advice and guidance, they are more likely to choose you when it comes time to buy.
Advantages of Content Marketing
Large and small companies use content in their marketing strategy, and it has proven to be highly effective. Some advantages of implementing a content marketing strategy include:
Increasing brand presence
Attracting more traffic to your website
Growing your customer base
Generating more leads
Becoming a thought leader in your industry or market
Resolving common questions and doubts about your product
Helping your customer make better decisions in their personal or professional life
And as a result of all the above, increasing your business sales.
Where is Content Marketing Applied?
In reality, quality content is part of all forms of marketing:
Social media: They are the perfect place to spread the content you generate.
SEO: By publishing blog articles, you’ll rank in the top results on Google.
Public relations: Successful PR strategies should address topics that concern readers, not your business.
Paid campaigns: For your Google Ads or Facebook Ads campaigns to generate more conversions for your business, you need great content behind them.
What Are the Stages of Content Marketing?
Content marketing can be used to attract potential customers, create interest in your product or service when someone is considering a purchase, and close sales.
To use it effectively, you need to deliver the right content at each stage of the sales cycle, from awareness to consideration to purchase. The correct approach simplifies the process.
Here’s how companies use content marketing at each stage of the cycle:
Awareness Stage
In the first stage of the sales process, your content should focus on your audience’s main concerns. Writing about their pain points, problems, and doubts gives you the best chance to engage with them.
Content at this stage should be educational and advisory. Try articles, blog posts, eBooks, videos, and newsletters.
Consideration Stage
Here, content should offer a mix of useful information and marketing. It should educate the reader on what features to look for and how the various features of your products or services address and solve their needs.
The content should lean towards what your business offers. Case studies, tutorials, and explainer videos are ideal for this stage. Examples include posts like “10 Mistakes to Avoid When Buying.”
Closing Stage
Content marketing plays an important role when a potential customer is close to making a purchase. Here, you can focus on sales, as long as you continue to emphasize why you’re the best option, not just how great your products are.
Your core message should be your expertise, knowledge, and the unique advantages of what you’re selling. The best content for this includes user-generated content, buyer’s guides, or research reports.
Data from Semrush indicates that 78% of companies that succeeded with content in 2021 had a documented content marketing strategy; they achieved three times more organic traffic with articles that included the word “Guide” in the title; and 78% of their high-scoring texts had a consistent tone of voice.
How to Start Implementing Content Marketing in Your Company
Identify your audience: You’ll need to be clear about who your reader is, their problems, priorities, and preferences.
Choose the right format: This will correspond to the sales cycle stage for which you’re creating content (as discussed above). For some, a podcast may be better, while for others, an explainer video of your product might be more effective.
Select a content professional: Look for a writer with experience and knowledge in marketing. This person will write the texts, but you should review their quality and accuracy.
Determine how to distribute it: Decide whether you’ll have a blog, send it via email, or share it through your social media channels. Wherever most of your audience is, that’s the best medium.
Prepare a sustainable plan: Once you’re sure of all the above, create a short-term plan, maybe for six months. In content marketing, quality is just as important as consistency.
Best Practices for Content Marketing
Sharing content that consumers find valuable to draw them into your sales funnel is a game where the rules tend to change constantly.
One of the main trends in content marketing for 2022 is focusing on consumer needs.
It’s essential to optimize your content both for search engines and for the reader’s experience.
It’s also important to set measurable goals that can be reviewed periodically. This will ensure that your brand’s content strategy delivers the desired results.
To increase visibility in search engine results and improve the reader’s experience, you can try the following:
Create a title that tells readers what to expect
Tell a story with header tags
Add links to relevant content on your website
Add links to relevant external resources that help the reader navigate from your tips to action
Maintain a consistent and relevant tone of voice
Improve overall readability with tools like an SEO writing assistant
Focus on providing useful content and original research. That’s the only way to stand out from the growing competition.
Top Content Marketing Trends for 2022
While the success of a content marketing strategy depends on several factors (such as your industry, business goals, and the type of product or service you offer), it’s important to consider some current trends:
Focus on a Better Content Experience
Staying up to date with what your target audience prefers and needs in terms of content is a way to create a better overall experience for them.
It’s also important to create your own unique narrative and use it across the board to provide consistent and engaging content on any platform you want to explore.
Increased Use of Interactive Content
Marketers agree that using interactive content over static content enhances the audience experience, grabs more attention, and keeps them on a web page longer.
You can see this type of content in interactive eBooks, reports, or guides with animations or expandable sections. You could repurpose your blog content into interactive infographics.
Prioritize More Empathetic Content
Empathetic marketing is the approach of first seeing the world through your customers’ eyes and using what you find to create a content strategy that meets their needs and desires.
It’s a way to speak to your target audience as humans, not just potential buyers. To start, closely observe your audience and answer the following:
Who are your customers?
What pain points and challenges do they face?
What motivates them to take action?
Once you answer these questions, you can start creating helpful content that evokes identifiable emotions in your customers. This can build trust, create better experiences for them, and develop more authentic relationships.
Video Marketing
In the past two years, video has been the rising star when it comes to popular and effective online content. That’s not going to change anytime soon.
Additionally, one in four marketers who already use videos confirms that it’s the type of content that generates the highest ROI for them.
A Hybrid of Virtual and Live Events
While brands adapted impressively to the virtual world during the pandemic, 2022 will see the return of some live events, such as workshops and conferences.
Each brand will need to weigh the use of both and present a hybrid marketing strategy that balances the needs of their customers.
Focus on Personalization and Hyper-Personalization
Personalizing messages and information increases overall customer engagement, especially in email marketing campaigns.
As customers experience this standard personalization, they increasingly like it and look for brands that personalize their particular buyer journey.
Another growing trend is hyper-personalization, which goes beyond just calling a customer by their name.
It leverages their individual preferences, desires, and needs; it’s a marketing approach that uses data, analytics, artificial intelligence, and automation to create unique interactions with individual customers.
Provide More Audio Content
Audio has gained popularity in recent years thanks to innovative podcasts available live or on-demand. This trend will continue to rise.
Optimize Content for Voice Search
With products like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, voice search is becoming increasingly popular.
Voice queries are in the form of questions, not a conversational format, and that will affect your content overall.
So instead of writing keywords like "Best content distribution channels," it’s now important to answer questions like "Hey Google, what are the best content distribution channels?"
Overall, brands will need to experiment and find the best ways to optimize their content for voice search without compromising their content’s ranking in response to text queries on SERPs.
Augmented Reality (AR)
Augmented reality is increasingly on the radar of content marketers.
Videos on Facebook and other platforms already offer to immerse viewers in 360-degree artificial worlds and provide a newer way to try out products before purchasing.
For example, real estate companies use augmented reality to showcase 3D models of houses.
From a content writer’s perspective, strong written and visual storytelling skills will be required to encourage customers to take advantage of a brand’s AR features, including compelling explanatory copy combined with direct calls to action (CTAs).
Depending on your goals, choose which aspects of content marketing to start using or how to refine the techniques you’ve already implemented.
