Content Marketing Tutorial
Content marketing is a popular way to attract new customers, especially it is popular on the English-language Internet. Marketers and advertisers can invest in this concept by a variety of meanings. Let’s see what content marketing is and how it looks in practice.
In our area, the concept of “content marketing” can be used in completely different situations and contexts. Most often, this buzzword is the blogging and promotion of the company’s blog, search engine optimization site. Sometimes it is divided into separate services: writing articles, creating infographics, videos, etc. There is nothing wrong in this, but the concept of content marketing is a bit wider: it is, first of all, an approach of promoting goods and services and, secondly, a set of private techniques and methods.
By such an action is meant the implementation of the order / purchase, or a step that closely brings a potential client closer to making an order, for example, writing an application or calling a contact number on your website.
In general, content marketing consists in distributing such content, thanks to which a potential client will pay attention to the company’s offer and with some probability will become its actual client. Content, however, can be absolutely any format: text, graphic, audio or video. And the channels and methods of its distribution are very different and their number is limited only by the imagination of the marketer and common sense.
Content marketing involves playing long and building a good company reputation. The value and relevance of the content is what makes this approach different from spam on social networks and mailboxes. The essence of content marketing is precisely to create content that is valuable to potential customers: such reviews, jokes or useful tips that can get the user’s location, such that you can gain his trust.
Types of content
Speaking of the fact that the content format can be any, we mean the creation of only such materials that will help us to ensure sales. And what exactly they will be depends on the product / service itself and on the specific target audience.
For example, these may be:
1. Articles
2. news
3. Research results or social. polls
4. Photo reports
5. Funny pictures or video
6. Infographics
7. Video recordings of seminars and webinars
8. Video reviews
9. Podcasts
10. Interview in any format
By the nature the following types of content:
1. Entertaining
2. Educational
3. News
4. Research
The main thing is that the material to be distributed is valuable to the user, one that will attract his interest, enthrall, and possibly make him share with colleagues or friends. One that directly or indirectly encourages the user to make an order.
Distribution channels
The most common methods and channels for promoting the created content are:
1. Company website or blog
2. Social networks
3. Email Newsletter
4. Educational and leisure activities, webinars and conferences
5. Thematic areas: media, forums, blogs, portals
6. Instructions and additional materials to the goods
7. Printed publications, books
Obviously, the first three items from this list are used most often and, in general, most actively.
Content Marketing Work Pattern
Although posting on YouTube a promotional video of a new product is also considered content marketing, speaking of the approach we are considering, we mean long-term promotion. Often, to obtain the desired result in the form of standing orders, it takes some time to create a working system for generating sales. First, it is necessary to create a sufficient number of suitable materials for distribution. And, secondly, to build a user base (subscriber base, readers, etc.).
Content marketing belongs to the class of sales methods, which at the beginning of their use give minimal effect. But this effect accumulates and, over time, we get more and more results with a minimum of additional effort. This is noticeable, for example, in the case of the promotion of a company blog or promotion in social networks.
It is also worth noting that in this paradigm not every publication and not every unit of content being created must necessarily push the user to purchase. Content can be distributed in order to get more readers, popularize other platforms for promoting the company, get feedback, increase user loyalty, etc.
Content marketing, as usual, begins with a strategy. In general, the scheme of work here looks very simple:
1. Strategy development, site selection and creation of publication plans;
2. Content creation and distribution;
3. Analysis of the results and refinement of the promotion strategy.
Content Marketing Performance Metrics
There is some problem with the measurability, effectiveness of content marketing results. Because some experts in the West believe that, in principle, content marketing is a qualitative tool, not a quantitative one, and there is nothing to measure here.
Roughly speaking, we write an article, publish it in order to satisfy certain needs of our client. That is, to make him happier, more aware. How can we measure happiness or awareness? In any case, this is a qualitative assessment.
We can ask him: “Do you like the article?” And he will say: “Yes, excellent. I learned everything for myself, I will buy your irons. ” Or he will say: “No, the article was written poorly, I did not understand anything.” Then, this will be an estimate. But we cannot survey all our readers, so we rely on certain quantitative characteristics.
If we are talking about a blog or third-party publications, videos, that is amenable to counting, we use the old PR metric – reach. Now all the big sites have an indicator of reading material. If you write in your blog, you will see everything in analytics too. Of course, the main traffic material collects in the first two or three days, but within a month, people still come. If you are still properly seeding the material, this process can take a long time.
Conclusion:
Content marketing is most effective when an ordinary person receives a thousand advertisements and offers per day. Content marketing makes a person stop, read, think, choose and buy .
Yes, it is really possible – to create a marketing strategy, thanks to which you will be able to build connections with your customers!