Content Marketing A to Z

Contents

1. What Is Content Marketing?
2. Traditional Marketing vs. Content Marketing 
3. Many Different Types of Content Marketing 
4. 3 Basic Strategies for Content Marketing

Content marketing has become a necessity, not a choice. But not many people know exactly what's different about content marketing from before, what types it is, and how to strategize. Let's start with the definition of content marketing and how to develop a strategy.

1. What Is Content Marketing

According to Joe Pulizzi, the founder of content marketing, content marketing aims to induce customers to take profitable actions for the company. It is a strategic marketing approach that clearly defines the target customer and creates value and compelling content to drive the target customer's engagement and further transition into a customer. Content marketing involves processes of content production, management, and distribution. Therefore, a company's content marketer is responsible for delivering the content the target customers want. In other words, content marketing is an effective combination of production, curation, and syndication. Instead of promoting a product or service, content marketing helps customers solve their problems by providing useful information in a consistent voice, and as a reward, customers show brand loyalty to companies in return.

2. Traditional Marketing vs. Content Marketing

Traditional marketing focuses on promoting products or services, and their effectiveness declines over time. Content marketing, on the other hand, provides useful information to help customers solve problems instead of promoting products or services, and content marketing and traditional marketing have the following differences:

Customer Centricity

Traditional marketing is corporate-centric. Traditional marketing focused on the information that the company wanted to show, not the information that the customer needed. However, in order to build and strengthen a trusting relationship between the enterprise and its prospects, it is necessary to produce and distribute content based on the customer's gaze. Content marketing follows customers’  perspectives and interests based on communication, not on corporate goals or priorities.

Delivers Tangible Value

Content marketing provides tangible value to customers. Each content delivers important information that customers are likely to search for or technologies that make life easier for them. It also offers solutions to help customers solve their difficulties in using corporates’ products or services.

A Long-term Perspective

Traditional marketing moves on a campaign basis and it has a beginning and an end. Traditional marketing shows the effect when the campaign is running, but the effect disappears when the campaign is over. On the other hand, content marketing is sustainable. Such as YouTube videos that were posted three years ago, blogs posted five years ago, and books published two years ago continue to remain as content and attract potential customers.

3. Many Different Types of Content Marketing 

Good quality content is essential to all marketing and marketing cannot be conducted without fine content. Content marketing is part of any marketing process, regardless of any type of marketing strategy a company utilizes. There are many types of content marketing. Let's take a look at the three most common and important types we encounter.

Social Media(SNS) Content Marketing

Social media such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are the most direct ways to communicate with customers. When planning social media marketing, you need to understand the characteristics of each social media channel, choose which channel to utilize, and establish appropriate content production guidelines.

Video Content Marketing

The importance of video content marketing is getting bigger and bigger. According to a study by HubSpot, 54 percent of consumers chose video as the content they wanted to see from their brands. As, videos are exposed on a variety of platforms, so you can leverage video marketing to increase conversion rates, improve ROI, and build relationships with potential customers.

Blog Content Marketing

Blogs are the most representative platforms for content marketing, allowing corporations to share more information. Companies turn readers into customers by publishing blog content and helping increase brand awareness.

4. 3 Basic Strategies for Content Marketing

The first thing you need to do to create effective content is to devise a content strategy. By clarifying your strategy, you can collaborate with others effectively and deliver a consistent story to your target customers. In order to establish a company's content marketing strategy, the following prerequisites must be clearly defined.

Set Objectives and Goals

If the objectives and goals are not clear, content marketing will lose direction over time. Content marketing objectives include increasing brand awareness, customer engagement, and website traffic. Moreover, it could be creating and nurturing marketing leads or improving ROI. Marketers must set the purpose of publishing the content, the response they expect from customers who consume it, and the value that the content is expected to deliver to the enterprise. Therefore, Content planning based on clear purposes and goals can help reduce time-consuming and conduct effective marketing activities.

Definition and Understanding of Target Customer

Content marketing typically aims to serve target customers, not all customers. Focus public attention first, focus on customers with more detailed needs, and identify the core customers of the enterprise. Marketers need to focus on public interests in advance. Then focus on customers with more detailed needs and identify the core customers of their business. Establishing a customer persona prior to content planning and production makes it easier to decide which content to produce.

Establish a Mission

Once business model selection, setting purpose & goal, and understanding of target customers are completed, content marketing missions can finally be established. Write a simple mission statement that represents the company's content vision and values, benefits, priorities, and principles. These mission statements should provide a concise representation of those elements.

So far, we've looked at content marketing A to Z. Furthermore, for effective content marketing, content must be produced with consideration of various factors such as copywriting, SEO, and data analysis capabilities.

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