To get the word out about your small business, you need to learn content marketing.
In the past, customers went to a brick-and-mortar business when they needed a product or service. Now, they search online for the best offer without ever meeting the business owner. This is the number one reason for getting information about your business out there through content marketing.
Learning to do content marketing means starting with the basics. You need to understand the process, strategy, and tools for creating clear content that converts into sales.
Let’s start with a definition.
What is Content Marketing?
It is a marketing technique to create and distribute valuable and relevant content. The purpose is to educate, nurture, and convert customers through digital means, including educational articles, videos, e-books, blog posts, webinars, and entertainment products.
This definition is a simplistic view of content marketing. For a deeper understanding, let’s look at it from the objectives of marketing and the internet.
Content Marketing objectives include promoting offers online for brand awareness, lead generation, new customer prospecting, and existing customer retention.
Ultimately, the long-term objective of content marketing is to build brand loyalty and increase ROI while reducing overall marketing expenses.
More and more business owners see the benefits of content marketing strategies. According to the content marketing institute, 91% of B2B and 86% of B2C marketers used content marketing in 2018.
Why is Content Marketing Important for Business?
Content marketing is a business tool aimed at your target audience. Your ideal customers have their pain points. With a content marketing strategy, you can research their challenges and show how to solve them. Deliver value, and your business will grow.
Once you know what your target audience wants, you have a responsibility to find the best way of connecting with them. Every means of connecting with your audience becomes your content marketing asset – blog, video, etc.
For instance, this blog post is a content marketing asset of swing point media, a content marketing agency. The agency assists business owners with understanding how content marketing can help their businesses, and it helps them take action.
Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing strategy is a continuous process of achieving your business goals.
It is a mistake to create content without a purpose. Content attracts an audience, but you don’t create content just for the sake of creating. There needs to be a plan.
Content marketing strategy is the process of defining your marketing goals and setting your priorities. It is a systematic approach for understanding your audience and the best ways to reach them.
Does being a blogger help achieve your goal? Why use blogs and not videos? What is the most appropriate channel for reaching your audience, and what content fits best on the channel?
In a nutshell, content marketing strategy uses innovative means to reach your ideal customers and convert them into paying customers.
There are different types of marketing strategies. Below are just a few. There isn’t enough space in this article to go into detail about them.
- Cause marketing,
- Relationship marketing,
- Scarcity marketing
- Undercover marketing, etc.
Some Content strategy examples are:
- Defining Ideal Customers,
- Keyword research,
- Competitor analysis,
- Content audit flowcharts, etc.
With these strategic tools in your toolbelt, you will understand what content to create and how to measure your KPI (Key Performance Indicator).
How to Do Your Own Content Marketing in 2021 and Beyond
Undoubtedly, the advent of Chatbot and AI in content marketing is changing how content marketing is done. While businesses need to do content marketing, the bar for the skill required for success has been raised.
There are content marketing templates out there, but you still need the skill to use them effectively.
What Do You Need to Do Content Marketing Successfully?
While content marketing education is the key to success, working with a reputable content marketing specialist will get you results.
Essentially, you need to understand and go through the following eight core activities to do content marketing efficiently:
- Set your goals
- Establish your KPIs
- Define your ideal customer
- Assess your current content marketing position
- Think of the best content channels
- Choose the appropriate content type
- Determine your resources
- Create your content calendar
The above to-do list is a tall order for most business owners. The question is, why struggle with a strange activity when you can have an expert handle it for you?
Do you need content marketing to attract and retain more customers? Send us a message and Get Started now.
SwingPointMedia is a marketing company focused on using content marketing, such as written articles, video and podcasts, to attract their customers ideal audiences. This approach has proven to attract higher quality customers while simultaneously reducing the sales cycle by as much as 70%.
SwingPointMedia serves local businesses in Southern California and can be reached by calling 760-422-5176.
You are invited to also attend a free weekly presentation, providing you the tools and strategy to roll out your own content marketing program for your company, or see exactly what SwingPointMedia does for its clients to achieve success. It can be viewed live on SwingPointMedia’s YouTube channel, at 11 am pst.