Marketing is a core aspect of building any brand. It is worthy of note that in this new age, the old conventional way of marketing is becoming less significant and what attracts the public today is now basically digitalization. It then follows that to draw the attention of the public to your product or service you have to attract them like ant to sugar. To this end, we have what is called content marketing.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach through the use of consistent, relevant and valuable contents such as blogs and videos to address the problems faced by a target audience, with the ultimate aim of building a relationship with the audience, drawing their attention to a lasting solution to their problems in form of a product or service, thus obtaining customer patronage.
Content marketing does not have to do with simply advertising your product. In fact, content marketing does not put your product in the forefront of the content it distributes. The content created is such that helps answer the questions of users and solve their issues.
How to carry out content marketing
As have been implied, in content marketing, one does not just advertise a product. Content marketing is all about story telling. It is all about relationship building. To do content marketing is to offer content that have relevance to your target audience on an incessant basis, such that they turn to you whenever they run into a jam in that given field. Take for instance, you are an app developer. Your target audience would be those who have passion or need for apps and technology. What you then have to do is to distribute captivating content about apps and technology, answering frequently asked questions on app development, how useful it is, and how to go about developing an app. You have to release new content about new and diverse issues regarding apps and apps lovers consistently. By answering their questions and solving their problems, you show you care about them and not just your product.
By so doing, you are building a long-term relationship with your audience. Whenever they have questions concerning apps, they run to you. Eventually, when they need to make a purchase or develop an app, their loyalty already lies with you and so would rather patronize you than your competition.
Content marketing is a strategy used by world renowned brands
Research shows that content marketing is wildly used by prominent companies like Microsoft, Orbit media, Investopedia, Cisco Systems, TED, John Deere, GoPro, amongst others. It is highly noticeable how Investopedia comes up on the search results whenever a user makes a search relating to investments. Content marketing is not only used by big corporations — it is also very much effectually used by individuals, start-ups and SMEs.
Content marketing is what Jay Shetty does with his videos.
The 3D content model
As have been mentioned, content marketing is all about making your audience your prime focus rather than your product. To do this, you can apply the 3D content model:
- Find a problem or “pain-point” peculiar to your audience
- Structure your content to address that problem
- Then map the content to the purchasing pattern of that particular audience.
When your content is tailored towards the right audience who have the problem that your content addresses, then your content marketing becomes a success.
Content marketing is unified into all other forms of marketing for optimum results
There are several marketing tactics used by different individuals and corporate bodies. You can employ as many strategies as relevant to you. But contrary to what one might think, content marketing should not be treated as a separate marketing technique but as a part of the whole process. In fact, quality content marketing makes up a huge chunk of marketing as a whole in this digital age.
This can be seen in the following:
- Social media marketing: to market via social media, you have to create quality and relevant content for your followers to build a long-lasting relationship.
- SEO: search engine optimization involves creating top quality, relevant content as these are what search engines give precedence.
- Digital PR: strategic Public Relations is about caring for the customer and not just the product.
- PPC marketing: PPC will not work without quality content behind it.
Content marketing drives traffic to your page, and ultimately customer-action in form of a purchase.
Benefits of content marketing
The three core benefits are:
- Cost-effectiveness
- Increased sales
- Acquisition of loyal customers.
