Traditionally, marketing and advertising have been a basic form of promoting businesses. This has been through mediums such as newspapers and television commercials. 21st’s century has been highlighted by the increased use of content marketing which is relatively cheaper than the traditional marketing strategies.
Approximately more than 53% of business nowadays use content marketing. If you’ve not tried content marketing as part of your marketing basics, it might sound somewhat strange. What do you need to include in your content marketing plan? What are the fundamentals?
In this guide, we cover the content marketing basics.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content is anything that relays a message to an audience. In this case, content marketing is a strategic approach and process that involves creating and distribution of content that is valuable with the aim of growing an audience or driving sales.
Advantages Compared to Traditional Marketing Strategies
In case you’re wondering why content marketing is better as compared to the traditional methods, here’s why:
Cost-Effective
It beats the traditional methods which require you to pay for ad space through the mainstream media channels. The only expense is incurred through the development and promotion of content, which is minimal.
Viable Longevity and Scalability
This is a long-term marketing strategy that offers the chance to keep your content paying over months and years. It is also scalable because it allows you to grow your audience to as much or as large as you push it to.
Interdisciplinary Functionality
Content marketing works well with other forms of marketing to generate revenue. Some of the areas you can incorporate it includes your email marketing and Search Engine Optimization strategies.
Content Strategy
Part of the content marketing basics will involve defining a clear strategy with the guidelines, vision, goal, researching your audience, creation, promotions among other core activities.
Vision and Goal
You’ll need to a precise and clear vision of what you want your business to be both in the short and long-term.
You’ll also need to curate a clear goal which will guide you when creating the content. These will be the foundations of a great content marketing strategy.
Audience Identification
Define exactly who you want to sell to, or who your readers will be. You’ll need to understand their demographics, as well as know their behavior.
The more you understand your audience, the higher the chances you’ll have to turn them into customers/readers. This also helps you identify which digital marketing trends will work best.
Niche
You’ll need to identify the niche you’ll focus on. You’ll have to answer questions such as what the content is about.
Having a specific target audience/niche sets you apart from your competition. It helps keep the content relevant and appealing to your audience. The goal is to turn prospective customers into actual buyers/readers.
Key Elements
You’ve defined your vision and goal, identified your target audience, identified your niche and are wondering, what’s next? Here are the key elements you’ll need to be successful.
Personal Brand
Develop your content and tailor it towards creating a reputable personal brand. This builds your authority in your niche and builds your credibility. Audiences also tend to find it hard connecting to corporate brands as compared to personal brands.
BlogPosts
Your strategy will work if your blog posts are well-written. This boils down to the length (Long posts work better), the tone, topics, and relevance. Go for posts that your audience will relate to. This also means you’ll need to consider featuring guest blog posts. It increases your visibility to a bigger audience.
Social Media Incorporation
As part of your strategy, you’ll need to promote your content to social media channels. This maximizes your exposure and allows you to connect to new broader audiences. Since it’s basically free and has such scalability, it beats the logic not to promote your content on social media.
Content Marketing Basics You Need to Know
Content marketing outdoes but still does not eliminate the traditional marketing methods. It is but without a doubt cost-effective and hugely reliable especially if you’re getting your business off the ground.
We hope this article helps you learn content marketing basics and set you ahead of your competition that has no idea of what to do. Visit our website to learn much more about content marketing and how it will be beneficial for your company.
