Content marketing is the creation of relevant, stimulating and valuable content that is to be used for marketing purposes. More precisely it is the development of content for distribution to attract, acquire and engage a target market – with the end goal of producing profitable customer actions. Content marketing uses a number of formats including blog posts, articles, videos, photos, graphics, white papers, ebooks, case studies and how to guides/instructional information just to name a few.
As stated above, the main purpose of content marketing is to attract new customers and retain current customers by providing them with relevant and engaging content to consume which affects consumer behavior (if the content is not relevant and engaging then it is just content and will not affect consumer behavior). It could be said that content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers without a focus on selling directly. It is linear in nature and could also be described as a company narrative.
Rather than focusing on selling your products and services, content marketing informs your customers. It provides a deeper understanding of your products and services. It answers questions and assures potential customers your business has the solutions they need. Great content marketing should make a person read, think and behave according to the makeup of the content. Ultimately content marketing is an effort to increase brand loyalty through informational means.
Marketing Without Quality Content Marketing?
Skillfully written, original, engaging content must be the center of any marketing campaign. Today customers and potential customers are much smarter and sauvy than in the past. No longer can simple traditional marketing channels produce and deliver profitable results. People hunger for information and content marketing is the perfect way to satisfy this demand while increasing your bottom line and brand loyalty. Creating and leveraging great content is essential regardless of the the type of internet marketing tactics:
- Pay Per Click (PPC): PPC requires stimulating ad creative and landing pages.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Search engines reward the best content.
- Social Media Marketing: Before followers, shares, etc. comes engaging content.
- Email Marketing: Successful emailing needs quality creative content.
- Affiliate Marketing: Affiliates need quality content to market your products.
The Most Effective Form of Content Marketing
Do you have a blog to to distribute all the wonderful content your company has created and developed? If the answer is no, then you NEED a blog! Think of a blog as your home base for original content and as distribution center for your content marketing system. Plus blog marketing is a great way to enhance and maintain search engine optimization results.
Blog marketing is one of the most popular and effective internet marketing techniques. Even if your company is extremely active on social media, creating a blog is important, perhaps even more important. Blog marketing allows you to establish, control and own your company’s brand image. Unlike social media marketing where you do not control all the content, with blog marketing your are able to control every aspect of your marketing message and establish your company as an authority on important topics to your business.
Customers will look to your blog as a source of information which ultimately can influence behaviors and buying habits. Producing interesting, unique and engaging content will keep them coming back for more and help solidify your brand perception in the eye of the customer.
Beyond the just written content, find ways to differentiate your blog. Use images, video, graphics, etc. to help it stand out. Informational graphics like charts and graphs are a great way to provide useful and easy to digest information to your readers. Blog marketing that includes multi-media content always performs better when compared to text only blogs.
Blog marketing is directly connected to social media marketing. Blog and content marketing allow you to engage and interact with your customers much like social media therefore make it easy for readers to share all aspects of your blog post. If your blog marketing is just posting a blog but does not encourage distribution and sharing via social media sites, it will never realize its full potential. Remember a major focus of blog and content marketing is to increase visibility.
Once you start a blog it is imperative you maintain it by consistently making post ( two to three times a week is great). Also if you have comments enabled, be sure to respond. You can actually do more damage by creating a blog but not maintaining it properly. If you fail to maintain your blog updated, you will lose your traffic, visibility and even the brand loyalty you worked so hard to build.
Contact KEX today to learn more about our content and blog marketing services.
KEX Consulting Expert Content Marketing and Blog Marketing Management