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Content Marketing Strategy
Creating a content marketing plan has recently become an important tool for business owners looking to expand their markets and secure more loyal customers. This article will walk you through how content marketing works so you can start using it to your business’s advantage.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a broad term used to describes a marketing strategy centered around providing customers original content that promotes your brand. Instead of putting up an ad somewhere and waiting for customers to be attracted, content marketing efforts requires an active investment in content creation on your part.
There are a wide variety of types of content you can create. These can include ebooks, blog posts, case studies, videos, social media content, email newsletters, podcasts, and original research. Through each of these platforms you can provide your target audience with engaging content that will get them to notice your business and its products or services.
Businesses around the world are turning to content marketing to boost customer awareness and sales. In fact, over half of businesses have started using content marketing to promote their businesses.
Many major brands are shifting much of their marketing campaigns and budget to content marketing instead of traditional advertising. Coke’s Share a Coke campaign and McDonald’s “Our Food, Your Questions” campaign are some of the most prominent examples of corporate investment in content strategy. Both were attempts to spread awareness of their brand and then engage customers by collecting feedback.
For a content marketing plan to be effective, you have to be willing to create unique, appealing content and share each piece of content with customers to get them interested in your brand. As it continues to become more popular among business owners, it’s time to learn how content marketing can draw more attention to your business and start driving up sales.
Benefits of Content Marketing
Most content marketing reaches customers through the internet. This is great news for your business. Most consumers spend a good deal of time searching, browsing, reading, and watching on the internet. About 81% of adults in the U.S. go online every day.
In fact, the average internet user spends about 6 hours and 30 minutes each day on the internet. Your content will have a ready audience on the web, which means increased website traffic and a bigger chance of converting viewers into customers for your business.
Content marketing has the added advantage of not coming across as marketing to potential customers. People are tired of constantly viewing ads,with the average consumer viewing over 5,000 ads in a single day. And those numbers are only beginning to climb.
Ad blockers have skyrocketed in popularity, and the ads that do get through are less effective when consumers are already overloaded. This is why content marketing may be more effective in the long term than paid advertising.
Content Marketing Cost Savings
Meanwhile, you can cut your advertising costs. Traditional advertising can get expensive when you’re purchasing ad space on a variety of platforms and trying to get your business noticed. Content marketing eliminates many of these expenses.
Business profiles on social media sites are free. Attaching a blog to your website is a quick and easy transformation. You may still encounter some content creation costs, but compared to paying for ad creation and their display, you’ll still be saving money for your business.
You get the best value, though, because content marketing is closely linked to customer engagement and brand loyalty. When customers are consistently viewing content that promotes your brand, they’re more likely to engage with your business and develop a positive relationship with it. Not only does this help you secure more loyal customers, but it also boosts your reputation.
Online reputation management is critical to your business’s success. With so many people using the internet to browse and discover businesses, you’ll want to promote your brand with positive messaging. Quality content can help you craft your brand’s image. It can also allow you to start interacting with existing and potential customers.
Social media posts and blogs are highly interactive platforms that let your audience engage more directly with your business than they ever could before. Customers can leave comments, ask questions, like your content, or even share it with others. Word-of-mouth marketing is still the surest way to get your brand noticed by new customers. Creating high-quality, shareable content will boost your reputation in the eyes of potential customers and make them more likely to engage with you.
Key Aspects of Successful Content Marketing
It might seem overwhelming at first to get started with a content marketing strategy for your business. You have a lot of different options available to you. It can be hard to know where to start.
Here are some important tips to keep in mind when setting out to expand your market with content marketing:
Choose a Platform (Or Several)
Certain platforms suit certain businesses better than others. If you already have customers that you want to turn into returning ones, you might want to consider email marketing. Customers respond well to newsletters sent directly to their inbox. These are the customers already interested in what your business has to offer. Keep them coming back with email newsletters.
If you’re more interested in reaching a broader audience, social media content creation might be a better strategy for you. Social media is about sending your content out to followers who can then directly engage with your business. Business profiles are free and easy to make, and then you can start sharing content with the billions of people logged on to social media.
You can also branch out into other platforms like podcasts, blogs, and even books. Some businesses even conduct research and publish original data as infographics to both inform and entice viewers. Digital marketing professionals can help you craft the perfect strategy based on your business, customers, and budget.
Use Search Engine Optimization to Your Advantage
Search engine optimization (SEO) should be a critical part of your content marketing strategy. Whether you’re writing blogs, drafting social media posts, or captioning photos, be sure to use keywords that will bring your content to the top of search engine result pages.
Creating content is a great first step to get people interested in your business. Paying attention to the keywords you use will make sure even more people find your content to help secure you more loyal customers. With the right SEO techniques, whenever customers search the keywords that you’ve included in your article, your content will surface in their result pages and make them more likely to find out about what your business does.
Content marketing is the most effective way to use SEO to your advantage. Quality content with strategically placed keywords can start driving more traffic to your site and getting your business more attention.
Release Content at a Good Pace
One of the most important things to keep an eye on when it comes to content marketing is your timing. Pushing out too much content at once will overwhelm potential customers and end up making your work less valuable. Not putting out enough content will give viewers too much time to forget your brand and move on to something else.
If you’re producing content on multiple platforms, you may want to use a content calendar to regulate how often you’re publishing on each one to make sure content is properly spaced out to keep your brand relevant.
Don’t Sacrifice Quality
It can be hard to maintain gold-standard when content when faced with the pressure to keep producing new material. But it’s important that you don’t let the quality of your content suffer just to keep up with your timeline.
It can be hard to strike a balance between quality and pacing, but it’s important that your viewers find your content interesting and worthwhile. Low quality content will turn potential customers away and make them question the value of your business.
Customers are especially drawn to images and videos since they more easily grab attention than text. For best results, always consider adding visual content to attract more viewers. Honesty and authenticity also go a long way with potential customers. Content marketing breaks down the traditional wall between advertisers and customers, so the highest quality content lets customers feel involved in your business.
Invest in Professional Content Creation
It can be difficult to maintain high quality content on your own. SEO Design Chicago offers a variety of professional content creation services to take your business to the next level.
They can help you craft engaging blogs that will get customers interested in what you have to offer. You can also work with SEO Design Chicago to develop a successful email marketing strategy. Getting newsletters into your customers’ inboxes is one of the surest ways to drive up your business’s sales.
You can also enlist the help of professionals for social media content creation, photography, and videography. It can be a lot of work to come up with the perfect social media strategy or to get your business’s blog up and running. The digital marketing professionals at SEO Design Chicago can help make these a reality for you. They can even help you develop your entire content marketing strategy from the ground up.
You’ve worked hard to get your business where it is today. Let the digital marketing professionals take care of the content creation for you so you can get back to doing what you do best.
Customers are finding out about new businesses from a variety of different content sources every day. Stay ahead of the curve and get started on your business’s content marketing strategy by reaching out to SEO Design Chicago today!
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