The approach and technique, by which businesses market products and services, are constantly shifting. With the emergence of social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, many businesses and brands are constantly restructuring their online marketing. While it is of utmost importance to adapt to the developing technologies and marketing methods, it is also paramount that businesses retain an understanding of the significance of strategy in online marketing. This applies to content marketing, conceivably more than any other online marketing technique, as the shifting landscape often means changing content.
Digital World
In today’s digital world, content marketing has proved to be necessary for small and medium enterprises. Content creation and blog writing has emerged as the new way to attract customers. In the past, blogs were only perceived as personal diaries posted on the internet. Nonetheless, today nearly 40 per cent of companies are using blogs for marketing purposes, and more than 46 per cent of people read blogs more than one time a day according to marketing statistics.
Many companies are engaged in content marketing because it is not only easy but also does not take the thousands of shillings spent by big brands on television ads. The company website, applications and updates strive to provide something of value to the business and customers- information, advice, tips, how-to instruction and opinions- the most important elements that customers need to know in order to make a verdict on whether they will purchase from your business or not.
Regardless of the industry – whether you are operating a law firm, running a bookshop or technology start-up content marketing should be a top objective in order to augment more inbound traffic to the company website and become a trusted advisor. The process of creating a powerful content marketing engine starts with identifying a handful of employees who can provide quality blog content.
To ensure that you remain top of the game, reserve two hours on your calendar every month to writing a blog post or any other element that you fill is pivotal in attracting customers to your company or business. With time, you should move to bi-weekly posts and then weekly.
Creating a steady content stream does not take place overnight, but the more time and effort dedicated to it, the more the chances of your returns. With time, your content will become better crafted and more educational, making the company or business site the place to go for customer to get relevant information and knowledge within your occupied business line.
Identifying the Right Audience
Perhaps the most important way to engage with customers through informative and interesting content is actually identifying the audience. Before you decide what topic you should talk about, and your preferred approach of delivering the content, it is important to think about the marketing aspects itself.
Marketing is about attracting a specific demographic and gaining their trust by publishing information on the site that not only entertains but that also informs them. Evidently, you will not be in a position to entertain and inform your customer if you do not know who they are and what interest them. From the B2C perspective, knowing what you need as business with the content marketing plan can help you establish the consumers you should target.
The question of content delivery relates to how you will attract the demographic (audience) you have identified to this persuasive, informative content that you are creating. Establishing the main influencers of your target audience and understanding how you can go about creating a sound relationship with those influencers, can give a direct path to the targeted audience.
With content marketing, the business strives to help and inform consumers. It is a way to show people that your business knows the industry and that their proficiency is trustworthy. The way that content marketing functions is not directly to sell to a particular group of people or reader, rather it gives the consumers an idea of why the product or service is good and the ways that it can benefit them. The company leaves the consumers to make a judgment on whether the product is right to them and make a purchase, but it is the sole business of the company to prepare a persuasive material, compelling enough to make the consumers want to buy the company products.
In addition, with supportive guide, blogs can enable people to share content on the company websites through social media platforms, and this helps the company to spread their brand message and augment company authority in the market.
That feature gives content marketing an edge over other unsolicited sales messages.
Benefits to Businesses
Content marketing offers immense benefits to the business. The content on the website can bring traffic to the site, from where links within the piece can help users be guided to other germane areas of the website. This means that there are more chances for individuals who see the content on the website to explore and search around the site. In this vein, content marketing can also link one blog to another and is an excellent way to help the company promote other useful content on the website.
Updating the company website with pertinent and high-quality materials, will give the site a positive impact on search ranking. Content marketing has been a principal element of many digital marketers marketing strategy, and many businesses with an online presence will find it important to implement it in the coming days.
