What is content marketing? Features and principles of content strategy formation

We encounter advertising every day and have almost learned to ignore it because ads and banners have stopped impressing anyone. Many people think that content marketing is all about posting articles on company blogs and promoting a website in search engine rankings, but that is few and far between. A trusting good relationship with customers is formed when they take a closer look at a business, its products or services and notice how much the advertising matches reality. People want attention to their needs and a personalized approach. That’s exactly what content marketing helps with. It brings the audience closer to the brand by providing information in a simple way.

What is content marketing

Content marketing is a special method of product promotion, the task of which is to strengthen customer confidence. It differs from classic advertising in that it familiarizes customers with the product without imposing it, but only offering useful material. Consumers like it when the description of the product is close to reality and gives clear advice on its use. It is this approach that builds trust in the brand and lets people know they are dealing with experts. If content marketing is competently implemented in a business, you can get:

• customer confidence;
• an additional audience;
• Increasing website traffic;
• brand promotion;
• sales growth.

Why you need content marketing

Content marketing is an essential tool for businesses as it helps in solving their strategic objectives:

1. Increasing traffic and strengthening the position of the site

If you know the statistics of search queries, you can create relevant and useful content that will help your site rank at the top of the search engine. This both enables consumers to find the answers they are looking for and promotes the product.

2. Increasing the marketing funnel

Making a profit is the goal of any business. Many customers go through several stages of the sales funnel before closing a deal. Content marketing helps bring most customers to the last stage of the funnel, where a purchase is made.

3. Leadership among competitors

Users always compare offers from multiple companies before buying in order to choose the right cost and good quality. Good content helps to incline customers in your direction. If you tell what your product is for, how it functions and how it will help the consumer to solve his problem, it will build trust in the brand, as the person will see the interest and your desire to help him. Then the decision will definitely be made in your favor.

4. Customer research

One of the most important stages of communication with customers is feedback. Basically, customers discuss everything on various forums or social networks. There, too, companies have the opportunity to gather the necessary information in order to eliminate a problem in the future, if there is one. Feedback also helps to study the expectations and needs of consumers.

5. Improving brand recognition

If a brand name has been popular and widely known for a long time, it increases customer loyalty. Quality content helps improve recognition. It takes longer to attract loyal customers in this way than with entertaining content, but the audience will be more trustworthy and well-placed to the brand.

6. Building trust and the image of the specialist

Gaining consumer trust is the goal of any content marketing strategy. An image of an expert will be needed when selling an expensive product to get the customer comfortable with the product so they don’t have to worry about potential buying difficulties.

7. Promotion through users

If the information turned out to be important and interesting, a person will definitely share it. Reposts and discussions in messengers and social networks increase brand awareness and reach. User promotion is created by product reviews and brand account tagging. People believe simple shoppers, thinking that there is no advertising in their advice. Therefore, it turns out that quality good products are promoted autonomously, and content marketing just helps to attract attention to them.

What is content strategy

A content strategy is a detailed plan for creating and managing content aimed at attracting and retaining customers, increasing sales, and boosting engagement of the other business metrics.

Content strategy is needed for:

• Managing the creation and promotion of content in the organization;
• achieving business objectives – building trust in the brand, selling products, spreading information about new products;
• Improved understanding of the target audience;
• calculating the number of resources needed to produce the content;
• differentiating your content from your competitors’ content;
• choosing the right formats of materials and distribution channels.

Stages of content strategy formation

Developing a content strategy consists of several stages. Let’s consider each of them in detail below.

1. Set a goal

A clear goal with a clear timeframe will help to establish the end result. Based on this data, it is easier to prepare an action plan. The goals can be as follows: increase sales, increase traffic, gain audience trust, improve brand recognition, attract new customers, increase customer loyalty, improve search ranking.

2. Analyze the target audience

This is one of those steps that determines the success of a content strategy. You can’t find leverage with your customers if you don’t know your target audience. You don’t need to rely on intuition or try to develop content for everyone, it won’t get you anywhere. Interview customers about their preferences, habits, form a portrait of potential customers: age, gender, income, interests, social status. Think about what information they need and what time they can be found online.

3. Do an audit of the content that already exists

You need to find out how your website is ranked by search engines. You can improve your search engine results by maintaining a blog or social media page. Only for this you need to identify the least and most effective content in both blog and social media. Observe which articles are more popular, which posts get more likes and thanks to which materials customers make a purchase. With the help of an audit, you can determine if the content is working effectively, what needs to be changed, and what can be left in place.

4. Analyze your competitors

Find out what kind of content they post, where they post it, and how they communicate with customers. Studying this information will help you determine what fits and appeals to your audience and what content they are missing.

5. Decide on content types and distribution channels

At each stage of the sales funnel, the content will be different. For example, videos or articles in blogs will draw attention to the brand, webinars will trigger the desire to buy the product, and sales emails will be able to “push” the customer to purchase. You need to think carefully about what formats of material you will produce and with what regularity.

It may be easier to first decide which channels you will use to distribute your content, as each platform has its own characteristics and specifics. For example, if you are selling lingerie, invest your budget and time in social media. There are a lot of girls there who take into account the feedback of other customers when choosing a product. If your product is sports equipment, start a YouTube channel. There you can post a video review of the product, as well as a small video lesson with complexes of exercises. This way you will be perceived not only as a salesperson, but also as a sports trainer, which will attract even more customers.

6. Create a content plan

A content plan is a document that contains all the details: what topics are planned to be published, in what format, when and on what platforms. It will help to avoid chaos when preparing material and be constantly in sight of users. To create it, you can use Google tables – a free and convenient option.

7. Select topics for the content plan

You can find relevant topics for potential customers by using Google Trends. You can also use an SEO tool such as Serpstat for this purpose. All you need to do is type in a key phrase on the website, select your country and search engine and click “Search”. You will get an analysis of the frequency of queries by cluster. Now you know which queries from your industry are the top ones. Based on this information, you can formulate topics for articles, instructions, posts or video tutorials.

8. Do some regular posting

Content marketing is not the ordinary release of articles on a website. It is necessary to post material on the site, in social networks and other various resources (even paid ones), and to create e-mail newsletters. Organics will not give a huge coverage of publications, so that the content was noticeable, for its promotion it is better to apply targeted advertising. It is essential that posting be regular. This is easier to keep track of if you use automated posting tools.

9. Monitor progress

For a content marketing campaign to bear fruit, you need to constantly monitor its progress: reach, views, user engagement, reposts, and other metrics. Google Analytics will help you with this. In social networks, you can monitor activity with the help of the built-in analytics system. It is important to work on the campaign without interruption until you achieve the desired result. But remember that regularity is very important in this endeavor. A couple of articles or one video every few months is not enough, it will not bring any success.

Standard content marketing mistakes

If you know the typical mistakes that are made by professionals, you can avoid them. So, they include:

• Poor quality content. Do not write content for the sake of inserting more keywords for search engines. Content should be useful and interesting to users.
• A marketing strategy with no purpose. The content itself will not increase the number of concluded contracts, the audience or its loyalty. Therefore, it is necessary to clearly understand what the material is published for.
• Lack of Call To Action. Any content should contain references to the product and a call to self-evaluate the product and its features.
• Commercialization of material. Showy and intrusive advertising is repulsive. Therefore, you need to sell your product unobtrusively. For example, by describing several cases when your product became useful to consumers.

Content marketing provides a great opportunity to increase sales and promote your business in general. Thanks to it, you can communicate with your audience by providing useful information for free, thus gaining their trust.

Olha Tyshchenko

Editor

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