Let’s take a look at content marketing and why it is necessary to make it part of your marketing efforts.
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action – Content Marketing institute
Why is content marketing important?
When using content marketing you can easily contact customers in the beginning phases of the buying process; the awareness and research stages. Content marketing can help you raise awareness about your offering and educate potential customers on your offering. You can also use content marketing to build and maintain relationships with customers, boost conversions and show your customers (both current and potential) how your offering can solve their problems. Ultimately content marketing can assist you in expanding your reach by providing valuable content.
The different types of content marketing
Social media content marketing
There are many different social media platforms out there today which enables you to share your content with your audience in an easy and effective way.
Nespresso South Africa has a stunning Instagram profile which it uses for part of its content marketing
Pro tip: Select one, max two social platforms, and use them consistently and appropriately to share your content. Focussing on one or two social platforms reduces the effort on your side, and your audience will see and appreciate the effort you put into the chosen platforms.
Infographic content marketing
Infographics are a great way to educate your customers on your products or services in a way that is quick and easy to understand. See below an example of an infographic we created for Black Friday.
Pro tip: Ensure that your infographic is on brand and adheres to your corporate identity and brand tone. If you are using data or facts, ensure that you check the data points/figures and facts for accuracy
Blog content marketing
Blogs are awesome to use to share information with your customers and target market. They can help in converting readers into customers, educate readers and create brand awareness.
Wilderness Safaris uses its blog to boost brand awareness and build relationships with its audience
Pro tip: It’s often not the length of your blog that matters but rather the quality of the content. Always run a spelling and grammar check before posting and use images to make the blog visually appealing
Podcast content marketing
Podcasts have become hugely popular. They are convenient and give you the opportunity to educate your target market on your products or services whilst creating brand awareness.
Pro tip: When recording your podcast, ensure that the person you are interviewing is a subject matter expert and that both parties are passionate about the topic at hand. Creating a brand for your podcast is also super important.
Video content marketing
Video content can improve your click-through rate by up to 300% which shows that video content marketing is an awesome way to build relationships with your audience and even educate them on your offering.
Craft Homes created video content to market how easy their new online buying platform is.
Pro tip: Great video content marketing tells your brand’s story in a human and very intimate way. Video content marketing is not a hard sell, you should instead be focussing on adding value to the lives of the people watching your video.
Paid ad content marketing
Paid ad content marketing is something which has become very popular. You can reach your desired target market while they browse their social media. When done correctly, paid ad content marketing can be very effective in building awareness and even in generating conversions.
Below is an example of a sponsored post on Facebook from Woolworths
Pro tip: Increase your engagement, by being very particular about who you are targeting the advert to. Targeting everyone is a lazy strategy and definitely will not get you the results you want.
Content Marketing Strategy
As with any marketing activity you need to have a strategy in place to help you achieve your goals, the same goes for your content marketing.
Here are a few quick steps to help you create your content marketing strategy.
- Have SMART goals
- Determine your key performance indicators or benchmarks
- Select the content channels that work best for your industry
- Select the type of content you’d like to distribute
- Set a budget
- Create your content and distribute it to your target audience via the selected channels
- Monitor and analyze your results.
Effective content marketing will assist in:
- reaching your target audience,
- Increasing your conversion rate
- Building brand awareness
So what are you waiting for? o Get started on your content marketing strategy today. If you need help with creating this strategy or the implementation thereof, get in touch with our team of unicorns, we would love to assist.